What is the oldest tree in Zwolle?
The oldest tree in Zwolle is a beech on the west side of the beech avenue in Park Boschwijk, which the national register places in a planting band of 1750 to 1800, so between about 225 and 275 years old. Boschwijk is a small country house just outside the city, and its most famous owner was Rhijnvis Feith, who lived from 1753 to 1824 and was both a poet and mayor of Zwolle. He came here in his free time to write, and in 1799 he published an ode to Boschwijk running to 34 verses. The beech was already a young tree when he was writing, which makes it one of the very few things named in this city that Feith could plausibly have walked past.
Ages here come from the Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen, which records a planting decade rather than a year, so most figures on this page are bands rather than measurements, and the beech at Boschwijk carries a band fifty years wide. The plane on the Potgietersingel is the exception: the register gives it a measured height of 33.6 metres and a trunk girth of 719 centimetres, and those two numbers are the firmest facts on this page. The register is the 2024 edition and is the single source for all seven, which is why they are all flagged. One pattern worth knowing before you walk: the singels and the Park Eekhout are laid out on the city's former defensive works, so the ground under these trees is made ground rather than natural soil. That matters for the trees at Boschwijk and at the Kranenburg cemetery, where the register places the tree in a row or a section rather than at a spot, and where a pin is marked approximate we know the grounds and not the trunk. If you find one of these gone, tell us and it comes off the same day.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.