Abies concolor - Colorado fir
Wörlein Nurseries - with a green tradition and three godfather trees: "We want to actively support in shaping climate protection and sustainability".
Today, the Wörlein group of companies includes one of the largest tree nurseries in southern Germany, a plant wholesale business, a versatile plant department and a large garden centre. It thus serves the entire spectrum of the green sector - i.e. private gardens - as well as public plantings. The family business with over 100 years of company history, is now managed by the 4th generation.
Since 2016, Heiko Wörlein has been the managing director and shareholder of the traditional company on Lake Ammersee, which has a Europe-wide trade network. Variety of product range and quality, reliability and customer orientation are as much a part of the Wörlein constants of success as openness to innovation and solid management. The trained industrial clerk Heiko Wörlein, who studied business administration after his apprenticeship, ensures this. He would have acquired the necessary "green" expertise in various internships. But as well the fact that he and his brother practically grew up in the plant world of the company speaks for the horticultural talent of the 4th Wörlein generation. "Our house stood in the middle of the tree nursery for a long time," says the 36-year-old.
Especially as a tree producer, Wörlein has a great professional interest in the arboretum in Weihenstephan: "We want to know how we can respond to the challenges of the future: to actively shape climate protection and sustainability." Heiko Wörlein also explains his company's commitment as a tree sponsor with the numerous connections to the University of Applied Sciences. Apart from the many qualified and valuable staff that Wörlein recruits from HSWT graduates, the company has been supporting the University of Applied Sciences for many years with donations and plant supplies - Wörlein is now donating three sponsor trees for the arboretum. His family, first and foremost his father, who still takes care of the in-house catalogue but also Wörlein's staff, are often and gladly on-site at the campus. There, the tree experts make comparisons, take photos, get inspiration and make assortment decisions.
Heiko Wörlein also made a deeply conscious decision to choose the three trees of the future in Weihenstephan. All three are already in Wörlein's assortment because they are considered to have good prospects: a Colorado or grey fir (Abies concolor), white ash (Fraxinus americana "Autumn Purple") and a tree arale (Kalopanax septemlobus "Maximowiczii"), also known as tree powerwort. With the experience and know-how of the company, which was already founded in 1913, with entrepreneurial foresight and in scientific exchange with the HSWT, Heiko Wörlein looks confidently to the future of coming generations: in the arboretum as well as in his own company.
Distribution: moist, base-rich mountain habitats at altitudes from 650 to 3400 metres, Pacific North America to northern Mexico.
Size: 20 to 25 metres tall and 7 to 9 metres wide
Needles: 4 to 6 cm long, grey-blue-green, varying in length
Cones: cylindrical, 8 to 15 cm long
