In 1871 a baron decided that he wanted a forest full of unusual trees so he started to plant trees not native to the area in his backyard. He didn’t just plant one tree of every kind but in groups of hundreds. In ten years he planted (or rather had planted) more than 12,000 trees on the grounds behind his castle in Weinheim an der Bergstraße, 1460 of the trees were sequoias. In 1955 the family sold the area to the State of Baden-Württemberg and the care of the “Exotic Forest” fell to official foresters. Today it is open woodland like any other public forest in Germany. Over the years more and more species were introduced and now more than 130 non-native species can be found species, most of them thriving in large groups.
Although I am most attracted to the sequoias other species have their charm like this American tulip tree. Information boards are displayed next to the paths.
Animals are few and far between because of the many visitors but one can get lucky.
Sometimes it’s hard to cross the path because of the amount of traffic. Heedful snails look left and right before they cross.
Occasionally though, one can meet a more threatening member of the animal population. This one was aggressively lunging at me:
pictures imperfect blog 
what a truely fascinating forest, an unusual undertaking but glad to hear it’s so successful!
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It really is. We tend to forget about it because it’s literally on our doorstep and to us it’s just the local forest …
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he was a definite step in greening our planet literally … I know a teacher who retired to pull all the non-native trees out of a 163 acre lot and planted more native trees … all at his own cost and labour. So your story puts a different slant on it.
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Apparently, they use the forest as part of a research project what kinds of trees thrive in the changing climate. I know in South Africa they fight against non-natives as well. But we have whole forestscapes dying because they cannot handle the warmer and drier summers.
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what a great use for it, our native trees come back very well from fire or drought …. they’ve adapted
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Thank you. THAT is EXACTLY where I needed to be today.
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It would have been very wet today (I’m not complaining, neither is my garden). 😀
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What a fabulous place Elke. You should sign that snail up for the Hashers 🙂
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😂 You’re right. Snails do love beer, do they not?
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