The Plane by Restaurant Urbana

The register says this plane was already standing when the tea house opened. The city's list says the tea house got here first. Villa Urbana began serving on the Wipstrikkerallee in 1924, an inn and tea house on a long avenue leading out of Zwolle, and it is still a restaurant today under the name Loetje. The national register of monumental trees bands the plane beside it at 1910 to 1920, which puts the tree a few years ahead of the building. Zwolle's own 2024 list records the same species on the same street under the same private ownership and dates it to 1930, which puts it a few years behind. Everything else in the two entries lines up, so the tree is roughly a century old and only the order of arrival is unsettled. Its condition is not in doubt, and the register is blunt about it: growth and vigour have diminished. This is a plane with a hundred years of roadside city life behind it and a crown that has thinned, rather than one in its prime. Go for the pairing instead. It stands with a copper beech at a corner of the avenue where people have been sitting outside with a drink for a century.