The Provinciehuis Plane

Haarlem's thickest tree grows in the garden of the province's own seat of government, a plane tree with a trunk six metres around, measured at chest height, which takes several adults linking hands to properly encircle. It stands in the grounds of Paviljoen Welgelegen, a country house built for a wealthy Haarlem merchant in the 1780s that later became the government building of the province of Noord-Holland, its garden known as the Griffietuin. No source pins down exactly when the tree was planted, though a plane tree reaching this girth in the Dutch climate typically implies a century and a half or more of steady growth, placing its likely origin somewhere in the 19th century, around the same era the estate itself changed from private pleasure garden to civic seat. Renovation work on the Griffietuin in recent years has deliberately reconnected it with the neighbouring Frederikspark, restoring a stretch of green that visitors can walk through freely even when the government building itself is closed to the public. The building only opens fully for exhibitions, public council sessions, or the national Open Monumentendag, but the garden and its giant plane require no appointment at all, a rare case of the tree being easier to visit than the institution that happens to house it.