The Silver Maple of the Leijpark

This park was dug by unemployed men. Leonard Springer, the most sought-after garden architect in the Netherlands, drew the Leijpark in 1919 as his last large design. Then nothing happened for fifteen years: the land could not be bought and there was a farm sitting in the middle of it. It was finally laid out between 1934 and 1939 as a work relief project, in the depths of the depression, thirty hectares in the English landscape manner along the little river Leij that gives it its name. So this silver maple was planted by men who were there because there was no other work. Springer designed the picture and never saw it finished. Silver maple is another American import chosen for speed, and it has the finest-cut leaf of any maple you will meet here, deeply divided into five narrow lobes with silvery-white undersides. It flowers absurdly early, in March, before any leaf, small red and yellow tufts straight on the bare twigs. It is one of the first trees in the park to do anything at all after winter. Stand in the middle of the park and it is the one with the pale flickering crown.