The Plane of the Old City Cemetery

Grey herons nest in the tops of these trees. That is the first thing to know about the old city cemetery, and in February and March it is loud. Herons are colonial breeders, they choose tall trees near water, they start early in the year, and a heronry is not a quiet place: a large ragged nest per fork, birds arriving with sticks, and a noise like an argument in a shed. From below you mostly see the undersides and hear the rest. The ground was laid out in 1833 to a design by Lucas Pieters Roodbaard, the same architect as the Prinsentuin, which is why a cemetery here reads like a landscape garden with graves in it. It went out of use long ago and is now a national monument. Ivy has taken many of the trunks. The plane is on the path between sections two and three, banded 1840 to 1850, so from the earliest planting. London plane is the classic city tree because it sheds its bark in plates and with it the soot, which is why the trunk is a camouflage of cream, olive and grey. Go in early spring, before the leaves, when you can see the birds.