The Zocher Beeches

The two men who laid out this cemetery are buried in it, and three beeches carry their name. Father and son Zocher were the landscape architects of the Kleverlaan grounds, and two cemetery records place their graves on the east side, near Schoterweg. The register lists three European beeches standing together at that spot under a single entry: Zocherbeuk, the Zocher beech. Whether the trees were planted at the graves or the graves placed among beeches already growing is not something any source we could reach states plainly, so we are not going to pretend otherwise. The register gives a planting band of 1800 to 1850, which is roughly 175 to 225 years, a range wide enough to allow either version. What is not in question is what they do to the ground. Mature beech keeps its lowest limbs low and sweeps them out sideways, and three of them together make one dark room with a floor of husks and nothing growing in it. That is the tree working: beech leaves cast the deepest shade of any European broadleaf, and very little survives underneath. In November the crowns go copper together. In February, bare, the grey trunks are the best thing on the path. A figure of four metres round circulates for this group, and we have not been able to confirm it.