The Westvlietweg Plane

Rich families from The Hague and Delft spent the 17th and 18th centuries building country houses along the Vliet, and this plane went into the ground while that fashion was still running. The register dates it to between 1750 and 1800, which makes it somewhere between 225 and 275 years old, standing in front of Zeerust, one of the estates strung along the Westvlietweg. The road is half the reason to come. The Vliet is a canal the Romans dug and the Dutch never stopped using, the Westvlietweg runs alongside it, and the strip is lined with the gates and coach houses of buitenplaatsen, the summer estates merchants built to get out of the city in August. Almost all the planting from that era has been replaced twice over since. This tree has not. It is a London Plane, the hybrid that would go on to become the default street tree of half of Europe, put in here long before anyone knew that is what it would become. The province owns it and the verge is public, so you can stand under it without asking anyone. Be honest with yourself about the trip, though: it is outside the city and it stands alone, so this one is a detour rather than a walk.