Qual è l'albero più antico di Breda?

The mulberries' age comes from the property's own recorded history rather than a ring count: Huize Ocrum's garden is documented as the planting site around 1780, under its then-owner Gerrit Willem Motman, steward of the princely domains, and the trees survived as the surrounding estate was built up and eventually demolished around them over the following two centuries. When Herman Hertzberger designed the current De Nieuwe Veste library and cultural centre in the mid-1990s, the three trees were already old enough that removing them was never seriously considered. Instead the building folds around the courtyard they stand in, their canopy shaping the layout of the structure above rather than the other way round, an unusually literal case of architecture following an existing tree rather than clearing space for a new one. They are not the tallest or thickest trees in Breda; the courtyard is small and the trees have grown accordingly. Their claim to being the city's oldest rests on the documented planting date alone, which none of Breda's other candidate trees can currently match with the same specificity.