As I enter ‘Domies Toen’, the botanical garden in Pieterburen – a village in the most northern part of the Netherlands a few kilometres away from the sea – I am immediately struck by the power of a majestic red beech tree. Her presence is almost too much to take in and I decide to first stroll through the garden before I am so enchanted that I forget about the rest.
It is a blistering hot day in the middle of a long heatwave. The plants shimmer in the dry heat and giving off an arid smell. There is not even a wisp of a breeze in the air and the temperature must be around 38 to 40 degrees.
Domies Toen is dialect for ‘The Pastor’s Garden’ and has a long history. It lies alongside a church, the Petruskerk, built in the first half of the fifteenth century. The pastor’s residence was built right next to it at around the same time but was demolished in 1961. In the past it served not only as a home but also as a farm, as for in former centuries, the pastor here also farmed. The church set land at his disposal where he then kept cattle and undertook small-scale arable farming.
Fashionable winding garden
In the course of the 19th century, the pastor earned enough from his pastorate to give up farming entirely. In 1880 the barns were demolished, and the front house enlarged into a stately home. In 1881, in accordance with the fashion of the time, a winding garden (‘slingertuin’ in Dutch) was laid out in front of his impressive house, in the fashionable English landscape style but in postage stamp format. You can still see many in the province of Groningen (where Pieterburen is located) in front of old, monumental farms.
The pastor’s winding garden was designed around the red beech that was planted there some 30 years earlier, as this kind of tree was a sign of prosperity at the time. Domies Toen still has the kidney-shaped pond, a little bridge, winding paths meandering up and down, and a few big trees, making for a wonderfully varied walk.
The status of a museum
The last pastor left Pieterburen in 1960 and the rectory was demolished in 1961 as the church wanted to make place for modern housing on the site. The Pieterburen municipality sprang into action and contacted farmer Tine Clevering-Meijer to see if she had a better idea. She sure did and renovated the garden in collaboration with a landscape architect and came up with the name ‘Domies Toen’.
Five years after her death in 1981, a biologist transformed it into an ecological botanical garden with more than hundred endangered species, and Domies Toen became a tourist attraction. At some point he resigned, and a foundation was set up in 1988 to ensure the survival of the garden which was redesigned as a natural garden. The 13th century overgrown watering hole (‘dobbe’), a natural source of water used for cattle, was reopened and an adjacent building became a tearoom. One constant over all these years has been the original winding garden which still focuses on plants on the red list. In 2005, the Domies Toen together with the adjacent church were given the status of a museum
National tree election
The red beech has always remained the centrepiece of the garden and still defines its image today. She was planted around the year 1850, like others that you can still admire in the province of Groningen. Back then, having a red beech in your garden was a status symbol. It was an unwritten law of the time that whoever had at least 50 hectares of land had the privilege of planting a red beech tree in front of their farm. This means that our pastor was of good descent or important enough to have had a red beech. In 2020, around 170 years after being planted, this magnificent tree was entered, on behalf of the province of Groningen, into the election of the most beautiful tree in the Netherlands and reached the third place.
The Queen of the Forest
Beech trees happen to be monoecious, i.e. each tree has both female and male flowers. So technically speaking, we cannot say that a beech tree is female or male. It is all about character. The beech is often called the Queen of the Forest due to the feminine nature of the characteristics, they are graceful, both in the tree shape as in the leaf shape and have a smooth trunk. The crown is wide and dense, providing a feeling of shelter at the base. She feeds the animals with her nuts and is known for her wisdom.
The red beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a naturally occurring tree in Europe and they can live to be 200 to 400 years old. Their leaves are at their reddest in spring when they seem to burst into flame. Later in the year their colour becomes somewhat duller and tends more towards the green. This was the case when I came across this splendid tree, the pride of Domies Toen. The weather had been very dry for a month leaving the kidney-shaped pond around her almost empty, which did not help in keeping her leaves flaming red. To my surprise, depending on the angle in which I took pictures, her leaves looked either red or green, whilst at first the colour had seemed quite dark red to me.
She has always had to fight
The crown of the red beech in Domies Toen has a diameter of 24.5 metres and her trunk is 4.6 metres wide. The trunk is covered in scars and wrinkles bearing witness to her long battle against the elements. The bottom third carries many rounded protuberances, all that remains of the amputation of her lower branches. These wounds have made her stronger and she towers with indomitable spirit.
This species is not native to the coast and she has had to bulk to standfast against the often-fierce wind howling in from the sea. She does not extend upwards like most beech trees do and you can see that her crown has been slightly flattened at the top. It looks as if she has at first put all her energy into broadening her trunk until she felt so strong she could let her branches burst up and around like a peacock in full glory.
She kept insisting
As mentioned above, the power of this majestic tree is striking. She is a captivating giant that pulls you in closer, thirsty to drink in her still but steadfast presence. She radiates the intriguing combination of power and peace that healthy ancient trees tend to give off. When I was satiated with her energy and set off home, she called me back and unexpectedly granted me the vibration of her essence. Even though I had cooled down a few degrees in the freshness of her shadow, I still felt too overheated to go for it, but she kept insisting in a quiet yet determined way.
At first, I struggled to define her essence precisely and got kind of stuck around the words ‘inner silence’ and ‘inner peace’. Two days later however, the deeper layer of this essence was revealed to me, as was its name: ‘Inner Strength’. A perfect match for what I had felt.
An extremely robust core
This specific stocky specimen of the red beech species has an extremely robust core. Since planted in Domies Toen, she has had to find strength in her deepest inner-self to survive countless brutal and bitterly cold sea winds from the North (Scandinavia) and North-East (Russia). Her resilience has built an unwavering, unyielding core.
When you look at the tree, her core strength seems something we take for granted, but nothing could be further from the truth. She has had to overcome life’s adversities (extreme weather conditions, cut off branches, countless landscape changes) again and again, and make the right choices in her growth in order to face all these hardships and survive and thrive with strength and dignity.
May the vibration of this Grand Old Lady’s essence provide you with inner strength, and help you build the core strength that you too may need to live your life in dignified grandeur.
With my heartfelt love,
Harriët
- Click here for a 4-minute video experience of the red beech in Domies Toen.
