The Horse Chestnut of Landhuis Brakkenstein

Nijmegen's own city register and the national monumental tree register agree on almost nothing about this horse chestnut except where it stands. One says it went into the ground around 1830, making it nearly two centuries old. The other says 1920, barely past its first century. Neither figure is a measurement, both are estimates carried on separate paperwork, and eighty years is too wide a gap to average away. What both records do agree on is the spot: a trunk about two and three quarter metres round, standing by the villa at Landgoed Brakkenstein, a star-shaped eighteenth-century park layout in Heijendaal. The estate's own lanes were planted mostly with beech, except for one western avenue lined in horse chestnuts, which raises the honest possibility that this tree began as part of that planting rather than a lone specimen chosen for the villa's front lawn. The 1865 neoclassical villa it grows beside now hosts events and dinners rather than a resident family, but the grounds around it stay open the way a city park is open: no gate, no ticket, just a walk through Heijendaal past Radboud University. Two registers, two ages, one honest tree, and a question nobody has settled: was it planted for the house, or was it already there?