The Summer Lime of Trompenburg

Every tree the national register lists inside Arboretum Trompenburg comes with a plot number, except this one. The weeping pear is in section C, the cedar in G, the evergreen oak in M. The large-leaved lime has only the garden's name, which makes it the hardest of them to find by the garden plan. The register puts its planting between 1930 and 1940, roughly 90 years ago. That places it after 1928, the year roughly 400 elms here fell to Dutch elm disease and James van Hoey Smith began turning the old estate into a real arboretum, so it grew up with the collection rather than before it. Nothing we found says who planted it or why. It is a native European lime, the large-leaved species, with broader, softer leaves than the common lime lining Dutch streets, downy on the underside. Around it the garden kept growing: Dick van Hoey Smith built the collection into one of international standing, the gates opened to the public in 1958, and the International Dendrology Society awarded the garden its Conservation Plaquette in 1983. Today Trompenburg holds the Dutch National Plant Collections of oak, beech, rhododendron and hosta. The register dates this tree, but no second source names it individually, and we found no published girth or height. If you have stood under it with a tape measure, tell us. It is a separate stop from Rotterdam's other old trees, about three kilometres away, with its own entry fee.