Project:
Contact:
Object:
Type:
Tree-avenue along a freeway
Location:
Country:
The Netherlands
Architect:
Rijkswaterstaat - dutch ministery for infrastructure
Materials:
1750 poplars
Published:
hier
Pages:
online
Content:
[article]      [image gallery]      
 

Freeway tree avenue near Best, NL

Lost: Perhaps the most beautiful section of highway in the Netherlands

In 2017 I had filmed it still, because of its beauty, already in the following drauf the only, me known real tree avenue along a highway was cut down. The passage video published here thus represents a perhaps unique time document!
It was considered the most beautiful stretch of highway in southeast Brabant, if not the whole Netherlands!
Coming from Germany on the Dutch A2 freeway to Amsterdam, shortly after Eindhoven you pass the village of Best. Here, in the southeast of the Dutch province of Brabant, there were once clog makers who made the famous Dutch clogs, preferably from poplar wood. In 1994, the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure and Water Management, planted an avenue of 1750 poplars along the highway in memory of this tradition. Over a distance of about 3.5 km, two rows of poplars planted in staggered rows flanked the six-lane highway on each side. The mature trees with their enormous height of more than 25 m complemented the road profile of the highway and gave the unique feeling of driving along a real avenue.
Unfortunately, poplars are not particularly long-lived creatures, and climate change with its increasingly frequent storms did the rest. Thus, in the winter of 2017/18, the first poplars fell on the road, 53 were then immediately felled in the spring, the remaining 1700 in the following fall.
In the current satellite image, you can see only countless tree stumps.
Even if new trees are to be planted, it is likely that this spatial experience will be lost for many years, if not forever.
Robert Mehl, Aachen