The Oldest Elm of Tilburg

The register says two things about this tree and both are worth having. It is the oldest elm in Tilburg, and it was already standing before the park was laid out around it. That second fact is the interesting one. A park built around an existing tree is a different object from a park planted from nothing: somebody stood on this ground, looked at what was here, and drew the paths to keep it. The elm was the reason for a decision rather than the result of one. Being the oldest elm anywhere in the Netherlands is a harder thing than it sounds. Dutch elm disease arrived here in the 1920s and the second, far more aggressive strain in the 1970s, and between them they killed most of the mature elms in the country. Whole avenues went. An elm that reached a century and a half through both waves did so partly by luck of position, standing alone in a park corner rather than in a line where the beetles could work along it. It is in the south corner. Elms leaf late and hold on late, so in November it is often still green when the rest of the park has turned.