The Copper Beech by Restaurant Urbana
How do I find it? You can recognise it by the purple foliage, which is what separates it from the plain green beeches further along the avenue. It stands in front of the former Urbana tea house, now Loetje, with the big plane beside the building.
The national register lists this beech, gives it monumental status, and then leaves two boxes blank. Can you visit it: unknown. Can you see it: unknown. What the entry does say is specific. A bruine beuk, a copper beech rather than a plain one, on private ground at the Wipstrikkerallee, planted between 1860 and 1870. That dating would make it a grown tree well before Villa Urbana opened as a tea house next door in 1924, and by some distance the oldest thing at this corner of the avenue. The corroboration is thinner than we would like. Zwolle's 2024 list of special trees records no copper beech on this street at all. It does record a private plain beech here, dated 1940, which is either the same tree written up loosely by a different surveyor or an entirely different one, and the avenue holds more than a dozen registered beeches, so either is possible. The age therefore sits in a wide band, somewhere between about 85 and 165 years. Both questions come apart with one visit. Purple leaves mean the register has it right, green leaves mean it does not, and either way you will know whether you can stand in front of it. Tell us which.
- Species
- Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica f. purpurea)
- Location
- Wipstrikkerallee 213, in front of the former restaurant Urbana (now Loetje), Zwolle (Wipstrik)
- Access
- Privately owned grounds; visitability and visibility are unrecorded ('onbekend') in the national register. Given it stands in front of the same restaurant building as zwo_013, it is plausible it is street-visible, but this is not confirmed.
- Getting there
- About 2.3 km southwest of Zwolle station, roughly 27 minutes on foot; a bus or short bike ride is quicker.
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Sources
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