The biggest pedunculate oak in the Netherlands stands on the Verwolde estate near Laren, in the eastern Gelderland countryside, and it survived only because an eighteenth-century family was told no to a good offer. A miller wanted its trunk for millstone axles in 1767 and offered 275 guilders; the van der Borch family refused, and the tree they saved is now reported at close to eight metres round. A dedicated hardened path, the Dikke Boompad, leads straight to it, and the estate named it Tree of Gelderland in 2018.
0 / 1 bezocht in Laren, Gelderland
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The Dikke Boom of Verwolde
Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) · roughly 400 to 500 years · Landgoed Verwolde, Laren, Gelderland (Lochem municipality)
In 1767 a miller offered the van der Borch family 275 guilders for the right to cut two millstone axles from this oak's trunk. They refused, and the tree they saved is now widely reported as the largest solitary pedunculate oak in the Netherlands.
Estimates put its age between 400 and 500 years, consistent with the estate's own planting records, and its girth at close to eight metres, though no source gives an exact figure, so this page records it as an approximate 780 centimetres rather than a precise one. It was named Tree of Gelderland in 2018, and the estate itself calls it the Jewel of Verwolde.
It has needed help along the way. Decades of fertiliser draining in from an adjacent maize field damaged roots on its southern side, and a 2005 restoration programme, groundwater monitoring, compost and mycorrhiza treatment, lime dressing, addressed the dieback. That is a record of active care rather than a tree in current trouble.
The estate built a dedicated hardened path to it, the Dikke Boompad, signposted in yellow and black and built to be reachable for visitors with mobility limitations, because enough people wanted to see the country's biggest oak that a proper route made more sense than a walk through the grass.
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