The Beech of Diaconessenpark

The flats around this beech went up in the 1990s. The tree was already a century old when the builders arrived. What stood here before them was the Diakonessenhuis, Leeuwarden's deaconess hospital, which closed in 1987 and had its grounds turned into apartments over the decade that followed. The old garden came through the conversion as a courtyard, paved through and open at every side, and it still holds its trees. Three more of them are mapped about 75 metres from this one. This is the least documented of the set. The national register gives it a planting band of 1880 to 1890 and then stops. The history field is empty. The red chestnut down the courtyard has a written record behind it, of the hospital garden it was planted for and of the root damage the 1990s building work did to it; the beech has nothing attached at all, so what it went through during that decade of digging is simply not on record. You can still pick it out. Common beech carries bark like nothing else of its size: smooth, pale grey and close to unbroken, more skin than bark, where the chestnuts around it are rough and plated. The register lists it as privately owned, as it does two of the three trees already mapped in this courtyard, which is a fact about the deeds rather than about a gate.