It was a great pleasure for me to be able to write about my 31 years of involvement with Arboretum Trompenburg in Rotterdam. Dick van Hoey Smith, who founded the Arboretum, had published two books¹ about the place he inherited and where he put a lot of effort into expanding the collection. Now it was up to me to write up the continuing development of what became Arboretum Trompenburg in 1958 and had a name change in 2008 to Trompenburg Tuinen & Arboretum (Trompenburg Gardens & Arboretum).