Arnhem's oldest trees keep watch at doorways: three chestnuts at the gate of a castle, an oak above a slope no drought can dry out, a plane beside the village church that watched German soldiers move in and Allied paratroopers fight past. Five more stand in Velperplein park, laid out after an 1880 design competition. Park Sonsbeek adds seven, Park Zijpendaal and Gulden Bodem another five, and Park Angerenstein four within a hundred metres of each other, including a tulip tree 37 metres tall and 5.39 metres round. None require a ticket.
0 / 39 visitati a Arnhem
Foto: Henk Monster (CC BY 3.0)
1
De Poortwachters
Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) · ~370 years · Hoogkamp
Locals call them Hans, Gretel and the Witch, and Arnhem's storytellers like to credit Karel van Egmond, the last independent Duke of Guelders, with planting these three sweet chestnuts by hand. The dates do not support it: van Egmond died in 1538, and these trees, girths of 750, 718 and 472 centimetres, are closer to 370 years old, planted around 1650 to 1700 at the gateway to Huis Zypendaal. The name that stuck anyway is De Poortwachters, the Gatekeepers, because for the better part of four centuries every visitor to the castle has had to walk between them first. The Hansel and Gretel nicknames follow the same logic: the two thickest, standing side by side, are the well fed pair, and the leaner third is the witch left behind. They survived a fire in 1945, the year Allied troops finally liberated Arnhem after the previous autumn's battle for the city, and outlast everything else the same way they always have, rooted exactly where the path forces you past them. In 2024, for Sonsbeek park's 125th anniversary, artists wired sensors into six of the park's trees for a temporary route called Arnhemse Bomen Vertellen, Arnhem's Trees Tell, translating each tree's sap flow and trunk movement into sound; the Poortwachters were its first stop.
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2
The Dalweg Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · ~300 years · Hazegrietje
Most oak stories are about longevity. This one is about plumbing. The Dalweg Oak has spent close to three centuries rooted on a slope where groundwater runs permanently just beneath the surface, so in the driest summer its roots still reach water, and in the wettest winter the slope drains before it can drown. That single accident of geology explains a tree with a 35 metre crown, wider than most Dutch houses are tall, and a trunk that measured roughly 6.2 metres around in 2015, thick enough to rank among the largest oaks in the country. It has not had an easy run at the top: a beech grew up beside it and a self seeded Douglas fir plantation crowded in later, both stealing light, and the oak has shed side branches in response for years. None of that has touched its vitality. Planted somewhere between 1700 and 1750, it stands above the walking path that climbs from Dalweg to Braamweg, one of the quieter corners of the Sonsbeek, Zypendaal and Gulden Bodem estate that the municipality bought whole in 1899 and never fenced off. No plaque marks it. You just have to look up while you are still catching your breath from the hill.
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3
The Huissensedijk Plane
Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) · ~265 years · Elden
The thickest Oriental plane in the Netherlands stands beside the smallest, whitest church in Arnhem, and the two have shared roughly two centuries of the same ground. Sources disagree on exactly how long: the tree is usually dated to somewhere between 1725 and 1800, its circumference now around 7.1 to 7.5 metres, short stemmed with arms so thick they read as separate trunks holding up one broad crown above the dike. In the winter floods of 1926, with the surrounding polder underwater, a farmer strung a rope from his raised farmhouse to this tree and used it to pull a small boat across the flooded land so his children could still reach school and the household could still shop. During the Second World War, German troops occupying the little Bonifatiuskerk beside it made the tree a direct witness to the occupation, and when the Battle of Arnhem tore through the city in September 1944, the village of Elden and this tree both came through largely unscathed while much of Arnhem did not. Its wounds since have been more mundane: storm damage patched in 1980, its heavy crown cabled in the 1990s to keep the arms from splitting under their own weight. It still stands exactly where the dike meets the church, in a corner of the city built around a football stadium and a ring road that mostly gets driven past rather than walked to.
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4
The Poplar of Lauwersgrachtpark
Canadian Poplar (Populus x canadensis) · ~250 years · Markt
The Netherlands' oldest poplar grows behind a concert hall, on the last stretch of canal Arnhem never filled in. Most of the city's old defensive moat became streets generations ago; the Lauwersgracht survived by accident, and this Canadian poplar has grown alongside it since somewhere between 1750 and 1800, long enough that the Bomenstichting's national register of monumental trees lists it as the oldest of its kind in the country. It is not a pure species but a hybrid clone, one of the first crosses of Populus nigra, Europe's native black poplar, with an American parent, made in France around 1800 and planted across the continent before anyone had settled on what to call it. A postcard from around 1920 already shows a mature tree leaning over the water in almost the same spot; a photograph from 2008 shows the same reflection, barely changed. It stands today in Lauwersgrachtpark, tucked behind Musis Sacrum's concert stages just off the Eusebiusbuitensingel, the kind of tree a city walks past on the way to a show without knowing it is looking at the oldest poplar in the Netherlands.
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5
The Scarlet Oak of Velperplein
Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea) · ~120 years · Markt
Nineteen designers entered a public competition in 1880 for what to do with a canal the city had just filled in, and Leonard Springer's plan, entered under the motto Natura, Ars et Technica, beat all of them. The park he built over the old Jansgracht became the Velperplein plantsoen, and this scarlet oak is one of its survivors, a North American species with no obvious business looking so at home in a Dutch civic square. Scarlet oak earns its planting for one trick, a canopy that turns a genuinely deep red most European oaks cannot manage, which is presumably why someone chose it here.
The municipal monumental tree register dates its planting to somewhere around 1900 to 1910, a generation or two after Springer's own scheme went in rather than part of it, though the register's own file admits an earlier date is possible too. Either way it has stood through the plein's complete rebuilding between 1995 and 2005, when new roads, cycle paths, a bus station and a parking garage entrance were dug in around it. It grows in the park's southeast corner, a few steps from Musis Sacrum's front doors, unfenced and unticketed. If you know its planting date more precisely than the council does, tell us.
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Foto: Marikit Louppen (CC BY-SA 3.0)
6
The Weeping Pagoda Tree of Musis Sacrum
Weeping Japanese Pagoda Tree (Styphnolobium japonicum 'Pendula') · ~120 years · Markt
Arnhem's national tree register keeps two grounds for protecting a tree, being old or being rare, and this weeping pagoda tree qualifies on the second alone. Nobody has recorded when it went into the ground; the council's own file says simply unknown. The shape gives away what it is: Styphnolobium japonicum 'Pendula', a grafted, deliberately weeping form of the Japanese pagoda tree, its branches trained to cascade rather than reach, so that in summer the white, faintly honey-scented flowers hang close enough to brush a passer-by's shoulder instead of drifting overhead.
It stands directly in front of Musis Sacrum, Arnhem's concert hall since 1847, on the roadside edge of the Velperplein rather than tucked into the park behind it, which is presumably why the register lists its setting as street rather than garden. Municipal survey work puts its planting band at 1900 to 1910, two or three generations after the concert hall itself went up. No ticket, no gate: it stands on open pavement outside a building that still hosts Arnhem's own orchestra. Nobody has published an independent account of this specific tree beyond the national register, so treat the date as the council's best estimate rather than a settled fact.
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7
The Oriental Plane of Velperplein
Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) · ~120 years · Markt
Arnhem already has one Oriental plane with a claim to national fame, a giant beside a village church in Elden with a trunk over seven metres round. This is a second, smaller one, growing in the Velperplein park in the city centre, and its interest is where it grows rather than its size. Oriental plane is not the hybrid London plane that lines half of Europe's boulevards; it is the older, straight species, native from the Balkans to Iran, and this one has spent well over a century on a small, endlessly rebuilt city island rather than open ground.
The monumental tree register puts its planting around 1900 to 1910 and links it, cautiously, to Leonard Springer's prize-winning 1880 design for the park, built over a filled-in canal after the city ran a public competition for the site; the register's own dating and that 1880 connection do not quite line up, so the link is a guess rather than a documented fact, and it is told here as one. What is not in doubt is that the tree has outlasted the square around it twice, once when the park went in and again when the whole plein was rebuilt for new roads, cycle paths and a bus station between 1995 and 2005. It stands in the open, free to walk up to any day of the year.
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8
The Black Walnut of Velperplein
Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) · ~120 years · Markt
Every few years since 2006, whoever surveys Arnhem's monumental trees has come back to this black walnut and written down bad news: a conspicuous wound low on the trunk, a crown that had visibly thinned since the 1990s, deadwood spotted in 2014. In 2024 the surveyor found something new growing in the trunk cavity, a resin-varnish fungus, though likely a young colony rather than an advanced infection. And yet the same notes say that in recent years the tree has stood full and healthy in leaf, which reads either as a genuine recovery or as a walnut simply refusing to follow its own file.
It grows in the strip of park on the northwest side of Velperplein, planted, the city's register guesses, around the same time as Leonard Springer's 1880 design for the square, though the tree's own dated band puts it a generation later, 1900 to 1910. Black walnut is an American import, grown here for its wood and its nuts rather than any native pedigree, and this one has outlived the plein's late 1990s and early 2000s rebuild, the new roads, cycle paths, bus station and a parking garage tunnel dug in around it. It still stands, free to see, on a corner of green between a 19th-century concert hall and a theatre.
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9
The Sessile Oak of Musispark
Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea) · ~130 years · Markt
Sonsbeek Park's oaks get most of Arnhem's attention, but a fifteen minute walk closer to the station, in the smaller Musispark behind Musis Sacrum, a sessile oak has been standing since roughly the 1890s with nobody much noticing. The monumental tree register ties its planting to a renovation of the singel plantsoenen, Arnhem's ring of canal-side parks, carried out to Leonard Springer's design around 1890, a decade after his prize-winning Velperplein scheme across the water.
Sessile oak differs from the pedunculate oak that fills most of the Netherlands by carrying its acorns on short stalks pressed close to the twig rather than dangling on long stems, worth checking if you want to be sure which species you are standing under. This one grows about 65 metres from a Canadian poplar the national register lists as the oldest of its kind in the country, so a single stop in this park puts two record-adjacent trees within sight of each other. Both are free to reach, along Eusebiusbuitensingel near the start of Parkstraat, no gate and no ticket. The register is the only source that has written this tree down; a Gelderlander photograph or an older map naming a firmer planting date would be welcome.
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10
The Lorentz Monument Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 250 years · Sonsbeek
Hendrik Lorentz got his monument in 1931. The oak beside it had been standing for well over a century by then. Arnhem's national register of monumental trees puts this pedunculate oak's planting somewhere between 1750 and 1800, which makes it around 250 years old and, by the register's own reckoning, possibly one of the oldest trees in Park Sonsbeek. What the register admires is its shape. It calls this one of the most beautifully formed and image-defining trees in the park, and explains why in a single line: the oak has had open room around it from the start, so the crown went sideways instead of straining upward through neighbours for light. Storms have taken pieces out of it over the years without leaving lasting damage.
The monument it now shares a lawn with is L.O. Wenckebach's 1931 memorial to Hendrik Lorentz, the Arnhem-born physicist, and it makes this oak the easiest tree in the park to give directions to. The ground under both was private for most of the tree's life. The Van Heeckeren family bought the estate in 1821 and had J.D. Zocher jr lay it out in the English landscape style; Arnhem bought the whole thing in 1899 and has kept it open and free since. Only the register has written this tree down, and it records no girth. If you have measured it, tell us.
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11
The Watermill Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 210 years · Sonsbeek
The park's own forest ranger stops at this tree. When Natuurcentrum Arnhem walks its monumental tree route through Park Sonsbeek on Open Monument Day, the old oak by the Witte Watermolen is one of the headline stops, which is a lot of attention for a park-interior tree with no name and no plaque.
It is a pedunculate oak, planted somewhere between 1810 and 1820 according to the national register of monumental trees, so roughly 210 years old, put in the ground during the decade that took the Netherlands out of Napoleon's empire and into a kingdom of its own. The register records nothing else at all about its life. Under history it says, simply, unknown.
The setting does the rest of the work. The Witte Watermolen, the White Watermill, is Sonsbeek's own historic mill, standing on the Sint Jansbeek, the stream that runs down through the park in a chain of pools and falls that most visitors follow without wondering where the water is going. The oak stands at that stop, free to walk up to, no gate, about fifteen minutes uphill on foot from Arnhem Centraal. Neither source gives a girth, and on a trunk this age that is the one number worth having. If you tape it, send us the figure.
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12
The North Meadow Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 210 years · Sonsbeek
One of the thickest oaks in Park Sonsbeek is also the one its surveyor is worried about. The national register groups this tree with two other heavy oaks standing near it at the northeast edge of the Sonsbeek meadow and calls the three of them among the most impressive in the park: wide crowns, real height, the kind of trees that set the tone for a whole corner of ground. Then the condition notes take over. For decades the trunk and crown were sound, and the October 2013 storm cost this one only a small branch. The 2022 survey found something else: almost no increase in girth since the previous measurement, deadwood through the crown, and weak regrowth where new shoots should have been. The surveyor's own words were that the tree appears to be declining strongly.
It was alive and standing at that observation, which is the most recent evidence anyone has published, and an oak in decline can take decades over it. Worth seeing while the crown is still up. It was planted somewhere between 1810 and 1820, in a meadow that is now the park's open lawn, and it stands at the woodland edge where the grass runs out. Free, any day. If you find it in better shape than its file suggests, tell us and we will say so here.
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13
The Zijpendaalseweg Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 180 years · Sonsbeek
Nobody has managed to measure this oak properly, and the reason is livestock. It stands alone in a grazed meadow at the corner where Zijpendaalseweg meets Sonsbeekweg, and the field is often closed off with electric wire to keep the animals in, which the national register notes, with a trace of irritation, makes coming back with a tape difficult. So its file records the shape of the tree and not its girth.
The shape is the argument anyway. This is an oak grown in the open with nothing competing for its light, so the branches went out rather than up, and the register calls it the first tree that catches the eye of anyone walking from the city centre up into Park Sonsbeek. It works as the park's doorman. Its planting band is 1840 to 1850, which puts it at about 180 years and makes it the youngest of the four Sonsbeek oaks on this list, though nothing about standing under it suggests youth.
You can see it and reach it from the path at the corner; whether you get to the trunk depends on where the wire is that week. Free, no gate, about twenty minutes on foot from the station. The register is the only source that has written this one down, so treat 1840 to 1850 as one authority's estimate rather than a settled date.
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14
The Sonsbeek Yew
European Yew (Taxus baccata) · roughly 175 years · Sonsbeek
A yew with a waist over three metres is a rare object in the Netherlands, which is the national register's own judgement and the reason this tree is on the list at all. Yew grows slowly and stays modest in most Dutch gardens. This one was given a planting year of 1850 and has put on enough wood since to pass a circumference the register declines to state exactly, recording only that it is more than 300 centimetres. Take that as a floor rather than a measurement; the true figure may well be larger.
It grows beside the pond below the Sonsbeek villa, next to a statue, in what the register calls a beautiful spot, and it is easy to walk straight past, because a yew in summer reads as dark green background rather than as a tree with a history. Something heavy came down on it not long ago, either a storm or a neighbouring tree falling across it, and the damage was described as fairly severe. At the most recent inspection the tree was judged to be in good condition regardless, which is what yews do. They outlive their own injuries.
Free, in the open park, about fifteen minutes on foot from Arnhem Centraal. The register is the only source that has recorded this tree, so the 1850 date is one authority's estimate, sitting inside a coarser band of 1850 to 1860.
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15
The Villa Beech
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) · roughly 190 years · Sonsbeek
Copper beech is not a species. It is a colour fault in the ordinary green European beech, a mutation that turns up now and then in the wild and has been kept going ever since by gardeners, because seedlings from a purple parent mostly come up green. Copper beeches are planted, in other words, rather than found. Somebody put this one between the Sonsbeek villa and its pond somewhere between 1830 and 1840, and the result is a dark red canopy in the middle of a green park.
That is close to everything anybody knows about it. The national register lists it as a monumental tree of roughly 190 years and leaves the history field blank: no storm, no famous owner, no anecdote, just a large old beech doing what beeches do, holding a dense low canopy that shades out nearly everything beneath it.
Go in May rather than August. Copper beech is at its best in the first weeks after the leaves break, when they are still thin enough to pass light and the shade underneath turns the colour of weak red wine; by high summer the same canopy has gone almost black. It stands on open lawn near the villa, free, every day, and needs no more directions than that. Nobody outside the register has written this tree down, so if you know who planted it, or when, we would like to hear from you.
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16
The Sonsbeek Forest Chestnut
Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) · roughly 170 years · Sonsbeek
This is the one tree on Arnhem's list you have to go looking for. The national register marks it as not visible from the nearest path, the only one of the Sonsbeek entries carrying that note, so finding it in the woodland north of the Hertenkamp deer park takes a deliberate search rather than a glance in passing. Bring the coordinates.
What is out there is a sweet chestnut of about 170 years. The register thinks it was probably planted around 1855, during the campaign that put in a large part of Sonsbeek's beech forest, and it is careful to present that as its own reasoning rather than as a recorded date. A chestnut in a beech planting is an odd survivor. Castanea sativa is a southern European tree the Romans carried north, grown for centuries as much for flour as for timber, and in the Netherlands it sits near the cool edge of what it can manage, fruiting properly only in a warm year.
October is when the walk pays off. The spiny burrs split open to two or three brown nuts, and this deep into the forest nobody is competing with you for them. The wood is open and free, no gate and no ticket, about twenty-five minutes on foot from Arnhem Centraal past the deer park. The register is the only source that has recorded this tree, and it gives no girth.
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17
The Willemsplein Plane
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 140 years · City centre, between the station and Sonsbeek park
Arnhem is redesigning its busiest square around this tree rather than the other way round. The plan for Willemsplein, due between 2027 and 2029, runs a boardwalk winding between the existing monumental planes so they stay exactly where they are. That is a late reprieve, because the square has not been kind to it. The national monumental tree register dates the planting to somewhere between 1880 and 1890, which puts the tree at roughly 140 years old, and it spent most of those years on the hinge between the railway station, the city centre and the gates of Sonsbeek park. Decades of building work above and below ground wore it down. The soil had to be dug out and enriched, and the tree now drinks through a semi-automatic watering system, which is not standard equipment for a plane.
Its history is legible if you look up. About five metres above the pavement there is a large opening into a sizeable cavity, bracket fungi sit in the crown, and steel cables run through the upper limbs as a precaution. The register still calls its condition reasonable to good, which for a city-centre tree that has survived this much counts as a decent grade. The broad crown is the one thing on Willemsplein that has not been rebuilt twice.
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18
The Zijpendaalseweg Lime
Small-leaved Lime (Tilia cordata) · roughly 100 years · Park Sonsbeek, along the Zijpendaalseweg edge
Almost every lime along a Dutch street is a hybrid. This one is not. Tilia cordata is the small-leaved lime, the species actually native to the Low Countries, and it stands on the Zijpendaalseweg a few hundred metres from a common lime beside the Watermuseum, which turns the walk between them into a free lesson in telling the two apart. Turn a leaf over. The small-leaved lime carries small rust-coloured tufts of hair in the angles where the veins meet, and it keeps a clean trunk, while the common lime throws up a thicket of suckers around its own ankles.
The rest of what is known fits in a line. The national monumental tree register dates the planting to between 1920 and 1930, which makes it roughly a century old, and leaves the history field blank. It grew up on protected ground: Sonsbeek, Zijpendaal and Gulden Bodem are listed together as a single Rijksmonument complex of historic parkland, and this stretch of road is the seam between that parkland and the city.
No source outside the register has written this tree down, so treat the 1920s band as one authority's estimate rather than a date. If you have an older photograph of this verge, we would like to see it. Free, public, about ten minutes on foot from the station.
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19
The Nieuwe Plein Plane
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 140 years · City centre, between the station and the Rijn waterfront
When Arnhem drove a road tunnel past this plane, it did not cut the roots. It moved them. The national tree register's file for this specimen records that the main roots were led under the tunnel box to a planting bed thirty metres away, so the tree now feeds from soil on the far side of a piece of infrastructure.
It was not the first favour. Back in the 1970s the growing site had already needed repair, and a grate was set into the pavement to keep the paving off the trunk base. Both were necessary because of where it stands. Nieuwe Plein is the junction between the old centre and the railway station, ground that has been opened up again and again for the ring road around the city.
The register dates the planting to between 1880 and 1890, roughly 140 years, and still calls the tree in fairly good shape: little visible damage, and vital at the last inspection. Planes are the species cities plant precisely because they put up with this kind of treatment. Not many are asked to prove it quite so thoroughly.
No source outside the register has written this tree down, so read the planting band as one authority's estimate. It stands on the open verge by the ramp to the Nelson Mandela bridge, free, no gate, about ten minutes from the station.
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20
The Watermuseum Lime
Common Lime (Tilia x europaea) · roughly 150 years · Park Sonsbeek
The national register lists this lime as publicly visitable and then, under visible, writes: unknown. Somebody left that field blank and nobody has been back to fill it in, which is worth knowing before you walk up, because the tree stands tight against the Nederlands Watermuseum in Park Sonsbeek, and the museum occupies the old Bagijnemolen, a watermill turned into a building about water.
What the register is sure of is the dating. Planted between 1870 and 1880, which puts the tree at roughly 150 years old. It goes down there under its local name, Hollandse linde, the Dutch term for the common lime, and a common lime is not a tree anybody discovered in a wood. Tilia x europaea is a natural cross between the small-leaved and the large-leaved lime, propagated from cuttings and planted across northern Europe in enormous numbers because it grows fast and takes hard pruning without complaint. The giveaway is at ground level: a common lime throws up a dense mass of shoots around the foot of its own trunk. Compare it with the small-leaved lime a few hundred metres down the Zijpendaalseweg, which keeps its ankles clean.
Nothing outside the register has written this tree down, so the planting band is one authority's estimate. Free, public parkland, about twelve minutes on foot from the station.
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21
The Plane of Lauwersgrachtpark
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 140 years · Lauwersgrachtpark / Musispark, city centre
Three separately registered monumental trees stand within 150 metres of each other behind Arnhem's concert hall, and this plane is the one nobody mentions. The country's oldest Canadian poplar is about 140 metres off and takes all the attention, a sessile oak of the same era stands nearby, and the plane is simply the largest thing in the southern half of Lauwersgrachtpark.
The national register dates its planting to between 1880 and 1890 and suggests, without committing to it, that the tree probably went in when the plantsoen here was redesigned around 1890 to Leonard Springer's plan, the scheme that gave Arnhem's ring of canal-side parks their present shape. That puts it at roughly 140 years.
It helps to know what you are standing under. The London plane is a hybrid of the oriental plane and an American species, thrown up in a garden somewhere in the seventeenth century, and it turned out to shrug off coal smoke, compacted soil and brutal pruning, which is why it now lines half the streets in Europe. Arnhem is one of the few cities where you can set the hybrid beside one of its parents in an afternoon: oriental planes stand on Velperplein and out on the Huissensedijk, with more deeply cut leaves and darker bark than the flaking, paler patchwork on this trunk.
Free, public park, about fifteen minutes from the station.
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22
The Utrechtseweg Black Locust
Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) · roughly 210 years · Utrechtseweg, west of the city centre
Somewhere between 1810 and 1820, when the Netherlands was either a department of Napoleon's France or had just stopped being one, somebody put an American tree on the Utrechtseweg. It is still standing.
That planting band, from the national monumental tree register, makes this black locust roughly 210 years old, an unusually early date for the species in this country. Robinia pseudoacacia comes from the Appalachians and reached Europe at the start of the seventeenth century, carrying the name of Jean Robin, gardener to the French king, who is credited with the first Paris specimen. It travelled because it did two useful jobs: the timber rots far more slowly than oak, and the roots fix nitrogen, which lets the tree get on with life on the poor sandy ground of this part of Gelderland.
Under history the register writes nothing whatsoever. What it does record is the address: a public square owned by the city, across the road from where the PGEM electricity company kept its offices in a villa called Bellevue. The company has gone and so has the villa, and the register still uses them to say where the tree is.
Old black locusts look worse than they are, all deeply grooved bark and a trunk that seems to be turning slowly on its own axis. Free, no gate, about fifteen minutes on foot from the station.
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23
The Boulevard Heuvelink Plane
London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia) · roughly 140 years · Spijkerkwartier
The last time anyone put a tape around this plane it came to four metres, and that was before 2006. The register liked its rate of growth enough to write down a forecast beside the figure: five metres by 2023. Nobody has been back to find out. If you are on Boulevard Heuvelink with a tape measure, that is a question you can settle in a minute, and we would like the answer.
The street matters here as much as the tree. Boulevard Heuvelink came out of the Boulevardplan that Hendrik Jan Heuvelink junior presented in 1877, working from a design his father had drawn twenty years before, and the work was largely finished by 1899. The register dates this plane's planting to somewhere between 1880 and 1900, which falls inside the years the boulevard was being laid out, and it has been the thing that makes the view ever since. A Spijkerkwartier neighbourhood tree survey still refers to it simply as the monumental plane on the street, which is how a local gives directions.
The register calls it sound and fast growing, with a strong structure and some root damage on the footpath side, which is what happens when a large tree and a pavement share ground for a century. A second registered plane stands further east near number 197.
Free, on the public verge, about twenty minutes on foot from the station.
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24
The Agnietenstraat Turkey Oak
Turkey Oak (Quercus cerris) · roughly 115 years · Klarendal/Hommels area
This oak was planted in a cemetery and outlasted it. When it went into the ground in 1910, the green strip on the Agnietenstraat was still part of Onder de Linden, a burial ground used between 1852 and 1876 and not cleared away until 1959. The graves went. The tree stayed, and it now looks out at a primary school.
Its Dutch name is Moseik, mossy oak, and the reason is in the acorns. Quercus cerris, the Turkey oak, is a southern European species, and its acorn cups are wrapped in long whiskery scales that genuinely look like a growth of moss on the fruit. Nothing native to the Netherlands does that, which makes it the one reliable way to name the tree from the ground. Do not mix the Dutch name up with Moeraseik, which sounds almost the same and means the pin oak, a different tree entirely.
In 2017 a residential block went up along the eastern edge of the plantsoen, and construction is the usual way a street tree of this age dies. The register reports that this one came through it in good order, with a sound trunk and a fine broad crown, at roughly 115 years old.
Only the register has written the tree itself down, although local historians confirm independently what the ground used to be. Free, public, about fifteen minutes on foot from the station.
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25
The Velperweg Copper Beech
Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea) · roughly 180 years · Velperweg / Rosendaal area
The house is from the 1930s. The beech in its back garden was already the better part of a century old when the builders turned up. The national register dates the planting to between 1840 and 1850, so roughly 180 years, and suspects the tree once stood beside one of the villas that occupied this ground before the present block went up. It became somebody's garden tree by accident of town planning.
So be clear about what this visit is. You cannot walk up to it. The garden is private, the register marks the tree as not visitable, and there is no path, gate or arrangement that changes that. What you can do is see it. The register states that the full crown shows from the public car park on the Rosendaalsestraat, and that a smaller part of the tree is visible from the Velperweg itself. Stand in the car park, look across the gardens, and the dark red canopy is the one thing on the block you cannot mistake for anything else. Bring eyes and nothing else; there is nothing here to walk to.
At the last measurement, in 2006, it was approaching four metres round. Nobody has recorded a figure since, so the number today is likely to be larger and nobody can tell you by how much.
Only the register has written this tree down. About twenty minutes on foot from the station.
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26
The Zijpendaal Giant Arborvitae
Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) · roughly 115 years · Landgoed Zijpendaal
This tree is in the middle of turning itself into several trees. Western red cedar layers: branches that reach the ground root where they touch, and new stems rise off the main trunk, so one plant slowly surrounds itself with copies of itself. The national register notes the habit on this specimen with something close to admiration, describing the fresh stems coming off the trunk and calling the result a stage of growth the tree has made for itself.
It is not a cedar and it is not from here. Thuja plicata belongs to the wet coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, where it reaches sixty metres and can live for over a thousand years, and where First Nations of the coast built canoes, houses, rope and clothing out of its wood and bark. This one was planted in the park at Zijpendaal between 1900 and 1910, which puts it at roughly 115 years, and it stands next to a group of copper beeches that are on the register in their own right.
The park around it was laid out in 1864 to Eduard Petzold's design, decades before this tree arrived, and the register keeps the two dates firmly apart. It rates the cedar as a large tree in fair to good condition and one of the things people remember about the park.
Open, free public parkland, about twenty-five minutes on foot from the station.
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27
The Zijpendaal Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 175 years · Landgoed Zijpendaal
This oak grows on the line where a country estate stops and a street begins, at the corner of the wood on Landgoed Zijpendaal with Daam Fockemalaan on one side and De Vilderskamp on the other. That position is written into its shape. An oak on a woodland edge grows two ways at once: drawn up and narrow where the other trees crowd it for light, and spreading heavy low limbs out across the open side where nothing competes. Walk around it and you are effectively looking at two trees stuck together.
The national register dates the planting to between 1850 and 1860, which makes it roughly 175 years old, and if that band holds it was already standing when Eduard Petzold redrew the estate's gardens in 1864. Under history the register has written nothing whatsoever, which is the ordinary fate of a tree that never belonged to anybody famous and never fell on anything.
It sits at the northern end of the Zijpendaal walk, a kilometre or so beyond the watermill oak and the Lorentz monument oak, on ground the IVN publishes as a marked public route, so reaching it costs nothing but the walking.
Nobody outside the register has recorded this tree, so treat the 1850s dating as one authority's estimate. If there is an old photograph of this corner in a family album, we would like to see it.
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28
The Hungarian Oak of Park Zijpendaal
Hungarian Oak (Quercus frainetto) · around 120 years · Zijpendaal
The national register calls this the tallest Hungarian oak ever measured in the Netherlands, and, so far, in Europe. That is the register's own claim rather than a settled record: it is the only body that has published a measurement of this tree, and nobody else appears to have put up a rival figure.
The lean is easier to check than the height. For most of its life the oak stood hemmed in on its western side by tall beeches, and it did what a crowded tree does. It went east, away from the competition, and set its whole frame at an angle. The beeches have gone now. The register notes fresh growth filling in on the west side of the crown, a tree quietly rebuilding the half of itself it was never allowed to have.
Hungarian oak is a southeast European species, a long way from home on the middle-west side of a Gelderland park. This one went into the ground between 1900 and 1910, which makes it old enough to have stood through the occupation and through the fighting that wrecked much of Arnhem in 1944.
Park Zijpendaal is open every day and costs nothing. The register is our only source here, so treat the superlative as theirs. If you have a photograph of this oak from before the beeches came down, we would like to see it.
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29
The Twin Giant Sequoias of Gulden Bodem
Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · around 160 years · Gulden Bodem
The hunting lodge these two sequoias were planted for has vanished without trace. The trees are still standing, roughly 160 years on, and are about the least removable thing in the park.
Gulden Bodem was a private estate when they went in, probably around 1870, with a lodge and a coach house at its centre and a landscape park laid out around them. Both buildings are gone. The park survived, passed to the municipality of Arnhem, and has been a national monument since 2006, which means the ground itself is now protected.
Giant sequoia was a status purchase on nineteenth-century estates across northern Europe. Whoever ordered these ordered two, and set them close enough together that the national register still lists them as one entry at one point, describing them as impressive, in reasonable condition, and clearly visible from the path.
They stand near the car park, which is an unglamorous address for a species that can live past three thousand years. Treat them as the start of a walk rather than the end of one: Park Zijpendaal and its castle are a few minutes further on.
Only the register has recorded these two, so the 1870 dating is one authority's estimate. If you know when the lodge came down, or have a picture of it, tell us.
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30
The Silver Maple of Zijpendaal
Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum) · around 160 years · Zijpendaal
Silver maple is the first tree in this park to do anything each year. It flowers in March, on bare twigs, weeks before the beeches and oaks around it have accepted that winter is over.
This one stands southeast of Kasteel Zijpendaal, the manor house at the centre of the park, and the national register dates its planting to between 1860 and 1870. Under history the register has written a single word: unknown. That is the ordinary record of a tree that was bought, planted and then left to grow while the house in front of it collected all the attention.
It is a North American species and an uncommon one to find on a Dutch monumental list, which is a good part of why it is on ours. Silver maple grows fast, sheds limbs in storms and is not famous for reaching a great age, so a specimen approaching 160 years in an open park is doing better than the species' reputation.
The park is free and open every day. Come in March for the flowers. Come in July and you get the other half of the name, a crown that turns pale silver every time the wind lifts the leaves.
Nobody outside the register has written this tree down. If you know who planted it, we would like to hear from you.
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31
The Beech of St Elisabeth's Gasthuis
European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) · around 130 years · Utrechtseweg
The hospital this beech stands in front of is now a block of flats with a dental practice in it. The tree did not move.
St Elisabeth's Gasthuis on Utrechtseweg is a protected national monument, listed as a complex on the state's own register, and has been converted into apartments under the name St. Elisabethshof. The beech went into the ground in front of it between 1890 and 1900, which puts it at around 130 years old. It stands on the street side rather than in any courtyard behind the building, so there is no gate, no bell and nobody to ask.
Under history the national tree register has written nothing whatsoever. That is the usual fate of an institutional tree. Somebody ordered it, somebody dug the hole, the annual reports recorded the patients rather than the planting, and a century later the beech is the only thing on the plot still doing the job it was put there for.
It is about twelve minutes on foot from Arnhem Centraal, uphill along Utrechtseweg, which makes it an easy first stop before the parks further out.
The register is the only source that has recorded this tree, and its dating is a decade-wide band rather than a planting record. If there is a photograph of the Gasthuis with a young beech in front of it, that would date it better than we can.
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32
The Wagnerlaan Poplar
Poplar (Populus sp.) · around 120 years · Alteveer/Cattepoel
The national register calls this a Chinese poplar and then stops, which leaves a monumental tree whose species nobody has actually pinned down. Several different poplars are grown in the Netherlands under that name, and no source we can find says which one is standing on Wagnerlaan. If you know poplars, this is a question you could settle from the pavement, and we would like you to.
The rest is on record. Planted between 1900 and 1910, owned by the city, growing in a plantsoen, a strip of public green, diagonally opposite the Rijnstate hospital. Under history the register has written nothing.
A poplar reaching 120 years is worth noticing on its own terms. The genus is known for growing fast and dying young, and municipal tree departments across Europe have spent decades taking ageing poplars down as a safety matter, which makes an official monumental designation for one of them unusual rather than routine.
It stands about seventy metres from the Cattenpoelseweg oak, so the two are one stop rather than two, on a residential corner nobody comes to Arnhem for. That is a good part of the appeal. This is a tree on the way to the shops that has quietly outlived everybody who planted it.
The register is our only source. Tell us what it is and we will name it properly.
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33
The Cattenpoelseweg Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · around 160 years · Alteveer/Cattepoel
Two trees on the national monumental register stand seventy metres apart on this ordinary residential corner, and neither has a single line of history attached to it. This is the older of the pair.
The register lists it as Zomereik Cattenpoelseweg, a pedunculate oak planted between 1860 and 1870, owned by the city, growing on the public green where Cattenpoelseweg meets Wagnerlaan. Under history it has written nothing at all.
That gap is worth sitting with for a moment. An oak planted in the 1860s on what is now a suburban junction was almost certainly not planted for a junction. Whatever it was put in as, a boundary marker, part of an avenue, a piece of somebody's grounds, the city grew out around it, the houses arrived, the road was surfaced and named, and the tree simply kept going. At roughly 160 years old it is the reason this corner has any canopy at all.
The Wagnerlaan poplar is seventy metres away, so see them together. Both stand on public verge, both are free, and neither asks anything of you beyond turning up.
The register is our only source here. Dutch tree enthusiasts appear to have written about this oak elsewhere, and if you know where, send it and we will strengthen the entry.
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34
The Cedar of Lebanon of Angerenstein
Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) · roughly 250 years · Angerenstein
This cedar was planted while Angerenstein was still somebody's private country estate. The national register puts it in the ground between 1750 and 1800, which makes it the oldest tree in this corner of Arnhem by a clear margin, roughly 250 years.
That is a long life for a Cedar of Lebanon in the Netherlands, and a long time to have watched the ownership change under it. Angerenstein was a buitenplaats for most of its existence. It opened to the public in 1921, and in 1941 the last private owners sold the whole estate to the municipality of Arnhem, which is why the question people usually ask about this park, whether you are allowed to walk in, has a flat answer. Yes, free, any day.
Under history the register has written nothing. A cedar does not really need it. The species carries its own architecture, tiers of flat horizontal branch plates stacked one above another, which is exactly why estate owners planted them in front of houses in the first place, and why this one still reads as a deliberate decision two and a half centuries later.
It is one of four monumental trees within about a hundred metres here, alongside a tulip tree, a Japanese maple and an oak by the pond. Do them as a single loop, eight minutes' walk from Arnhem Presikhaaf station.
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35
The Tulip Tree of Angerenstein
Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) · around 210 years · Angerenstein
In December 2010 a local history group put a tape around this tulip tree at chest height and read 5.39 metres, then measured it at 37.5 metres tall. On their reckoning that made it one of the largest tulip trees in the Netherlands and possibly the fourth-thickest in Europe. It had put on about three centimetres of girth in the previous year alone, so whatever those numbers are today, they are larger.
Thirty-seven and a half metres is exceptional for the species anywhere outside its native eastern North America. The national register dates the planting to between 1810 and 1820, which fits the roughly two hundred years the measurers estimated at the time and puts the tree in the park in front of Huis Angerenstein while the place was still a private estate.
Tulip trees earn a detour twice a year. The flowers are genuinely tulip-shaped, green with an orange band inside, and on a tree this tall most of them are out of reach of the eye. The autumn is not. The whole crown turns a clear butter yellow and holds it for weeks.
Park Angerenstein has been open to the public since 1921 and municipally owned since 1941. It costs nothing, and of the four monumental trees standing within a hundred metres of each other here, this is the one to walk to first.
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36
The Japanese Maple of Angerenstein
Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) · around 100 years · Angerenstein
Most Japanese maples are shrubs you can see over the top of. This one is on the Dutch national register of monumental trees, which for Acer palmatum is unusual.
It grows in the Binnentuin, the inner garden inside Park Angerenstein, and the register dates it to between 1920 and 1930. It was designated on dendrological grounds rather than historical ones, which is the register's way of saying that nothing happened here and the tree itself is the whole reason. A century is a great age for the species in this climate, and the size that comes with it turns a garden plant into something you can stand underneath.
Under history the register has written nothing. There is no founder, no anniversary and no legend, only a Japanese maple that somebody set in a corner of a Gelderland estate in the 1920s and that nobody ever got round to removing.
Come in late autumn. Acer palmatum is planted almost entirely for one fortnight of the year, when the leaves run through orange into deep red and hold the light like coloured glass, and a hundred-year-old specimen does it at a scale no garden centre plant can manage.
The park is free and open daily. Only the register has recorded this tree, so the dating is one authority's band.
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37
The Angerenstein Pond Oak
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 200 years · Angerenstein
The national register thinks this is probably the oldest tree in Park Angerenstein and will not quite say so. Its note reads: probably among the oldest trees present in the park, possibly planted around 1800. The planting band it records runs from 1800 to 1850, and we have kept the whole of it rather than narrowing to the flattering end.
So: somewhere between about 175 and 225 years old, an oak on the south bank of the pond. Angerenstein is threaded with streams, ponds and small waterfalls, and this tree has the best address in the park, standing on the edge with the water in front of it.
The register places it near something it calls the Zuenkerk. We could not find out what that is. It is not a church anyone lists, and it reads like a local name for a garden building, a ruin or a spot that everybody in the neighbourhood knows and nobody has ever written down. If you know, tell us, because we would like to name the place properly.
The park has been open to the public since 1921 and municipally owned since 1941, so there is no ticket and no gate. This oak sits at the water end of a short loop of four monumental trees, eight minutes' walk from Arnhem Presikhaaf station.
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38
The Robinia of Kasteel Doorwerth
Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) · about 350 years, by local tradition · Inner courtyard of Kasteel Doorwerth, a medieval moated castle near Arnhem, about 6.9km from Arnhem's published arn_003
A black locust normally carries a feathery leaf made of a dozen small leaflets. This one carries a single blade, a rare cultivar called Unifoliola, and it is held locally to be the oldest black locust in the Netherlands.
Its date is genuinely disputed. The castle's own account and the Dutch tree register both say 1678: three robinias planted on the forecourt by Anton I van Aldenburg, count of Doorwerth, to mark the Peace of Nijmegen, two of them felled in the 1880s and this one not. The plaque at the tree tells a different story, crediting the Frenchman Pierre Robin with bringing the species over from the eastern United States and putting this one in around 1601, and a date of 1579 circulates as well. By the better sourced version it is about 350 years old. By the plaque it would be older still, and nobody has settled it.
What is not disputed is what it has come through. Kasteel Doorwerth, a moated medieval castle, was wrecked in the Second World War and rebuilt around it. The tree stayed where it was, and has had its crown taken back three times since, in 1965, 2010 and 2016, to keep the weight off an old frame.
The inner courtyard where it grows is free to walk into. Only the house itself costs money.
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39
The Yew of Brantsenpark
European Yew (Taxus baccata) · roughly 300 to 400 years · De Steeg, municipality of Rheden
This yew was one of the first trees written into the Dutch register of monumental trees when it opened in 1983.
It is widely called the oldest yew in the Netherlands. Nobody has settled that, and the register itself does not make the claim. What the register does say is that the tree went in somewhere between 1600 and 1700, which puts it at three to four centuries. Yew grows so slowly that girth tells you very little about a trunk this size, and it lives so long that a Dutch specimen of this age is unusual rather than remarkable in its own species.
It grew up inside the grounds of landgoed Rhederoord, the country estate whose park became the Brantsenpark, so the houses arrived at the tree rather than the other way round. A storm took the original top out decades ago. A resident writing to the register in 2018 remembered photographs of the tree from 1960 and 1961 and described the damage. Somebody once cut a flame shape out of the trunk, which showed that the wood inside is partly hollow. In an old yew that is ordinary rather than a warning.
It stands in the front garden of a private house on the Brantsenpark, with an information post in front of it.
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