The Lebanon Cedar of Villa Van Gilse

The national monument listing for Villa Van Gilse names the oaks, a chestnut and a red beech from the years the house was built. It does not mention the cedar on the front lawn. The tree register does. The Bomenstichting's Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen records a Cedar of Lebanon here, 3.03 metres round at chest height and 23 metres tall, and bands its planting to the decade 1900 to 1910, which makes it roughly 116 to 126 years old. That band is the only basis for its age. We have found no planting record, so whether it belonged to the villa's first garden or arrived a few years later is something nobody has written down. If you know, tell us. The house behind it was built in 1900 for the factory owner J. van Gilse, to a design by the architect M. Vergouwen, and it is a Rijksmonument today. Since 1975 it has been a music school, and the garden around it is open as a park. The register last recorded the cedar in August 2023, and an aerial photograph from spring 2026 still shows its crown in place: the only conifer on the front lawn, blue-green while everything around it stood bare. The same garden holds two other registered trees, a plane and a catalpa, each with its own page here. The building belongs to the music students, so see the cedar from the garden.