Kaldenkirchen Sequoia Farm

Kaldenkirchen Sequoia Farm (Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen)
Entrance to the Sequoia Farm
Type	Arboretum
Location	Nettetal, Germany
Area	3.5 hectares
Created	1950 (1950)
Operated by	Society Sequoiafarm e.V.
Open	April to October on Sundays and holidays
Website	Sequoiafarm

The Kaldenkirchen Sequoia Farm (German: Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen) is a German arboretum that has been used as a biological institute for many years. Part of the protected area in the city of Nettetal, it is situated in the "Kaldenkirchen Grenzwald" (forest bordering Germany and the Netherlands). Nettetal lies in the Lower Rhine region of Germany.

In 1946, Illa Martin and Ernst J. Martin, both dentists and dendrologists in Kaldenkirchen, founded an arboretum close to the Dutch border. There, and in a nearby laboratory-plantation several acres wide from 1952 on, they cultivated 1,500 giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) seedlings from seeds of US origin from Martin's nephew Albert A. Martin of Santa Barbara, CA. The seeds were collected in Sequoia National Forest at different elevations, wrapped in burlap to preserve them and sent to Germany. They wanted to find out if the giant sequoia, which had existed in Germany before the ice age, could be introduced to German forestry. There was on the one hand an area of purely giant sequoia, on the other an experimental arboretum with trees such as Abies grandis, Abies concolor var. lowiana and Coast Douglas-firs. The project was financially supported by the German Research Foundation and met with great interest from dendrological circles, particularly in Great Britain and in the USA. Part of the field exclusively planted with giant sequoia was reserved for obtaining results of productivity by the "Ecology and Forestry Department" of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).