Founded in 1955 by brothers Calvin & George Frelk, Northern Christmas Trees & Nursery was started as a wholesale Christmas tree company. Both brothers lived in Illinois and ran the business by traveling back and forth, working full time for others and operated an additional farming business growing tomatoes and asparagus for Campbell soup.

As both businesses grew, in 1972 the 2 businesses were divided with George taking over the Illinois farms and Cal and his wife Arlene taking over the tree business in Wisconsin.

In 1979 their daughter and son-in-law, Ginger and John Ahl, entered the business and are now the managing partners. John saw the nursery business as a new challenge and began to rapidly expand into other growing aspects of the industry. Northern is one of the first to grow shade trees pot-in-pot. Today they are one of the largest, state of the art, pot-in-pot production areas in the Midwest featuring drip irrigation and injection fertilization. With over 2 decades of pot-in-pot experience, Northern now has over 100,000 container grown shade and ornamental trees in production. Also known for their container grown, hardy shrub roses, Northern has greenhouse production of over 50,000 roses. To complement their line of trees and roses, they offer hardy container grown shrubs and evergreens suited to the frigid northern zone 3 climate.

With over 50 years of growing experience, Northern is also Wisconsin’s largest Christmas tree grower operating on over 6600 acres offering Fraser, Balsam and Douglas Fir; Scotch and White Pine as well as wreaths, garland and related tree lot products. As leaders in the industry, John Ahl sits on the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association and National Christmas Tree Association’s Board of Directors.

Northern has held many ribbons for Grand Champion Christmas trees and has had the honor of providing a tree to the Blue Room at the White House as well as many trees to the Governors of Wisconsin.

Northern remains a family owned business and we pride ourselves in treating our customers and employees like “family”. It is the expressed mission of Northern Christmas Trees & Nursery to be a leading supplier of high quality Christmas trees and nursery stock.

We invite you to join our family of satisfied customers and welcome your visit to tour our facilities.

Owners		A recent visitor checking in on our office staff.
Calvin & Arlene Frelk	John & Ginger Ahl
Customer Service
Barb Corral Don Crandall Randy Evans	Phyllis Marty Deb Schutz Lisa Zawikowski
Growers
Cody Fernholz Larry Hasz Jason Jacobs	Container Tree Production Rose Production Nursery and Production Manager
Field Production & Maintenance Teams
Jeff Casper Joe Gaulke Fred Larson Kevin Monfort Jim Nyman Isidro Sanchez Jose Villafuerte	Dan Frelk Alvaro Herrera Martin Medina Jose Luis Morales Joaquin Rodriguez Dale Torkelson