At the end of the 19th century, various tree species, mainly from America and Japan, were planted in the existing city forest. On the gneiss bedrock there are predominantly humic, gritty, deep brown earths, some of which are also well loamy. Together with the different slope gradients, the precipitation of 1000 mm/year and an average annual temperature of over 9 °C, they form a good basis for growth. The first of the Douglas firs that stand there today, for which the area is known today, were planted in 1896 on snow-cracked areas on the Illenberg.[15] Between 1901 and 1911, several hundred thousand different trees were planted in the city forest to test their suitability for use in this vegetation zone.[ From 1930 onwards, head forester Frank continued the concept and expanded it.
On September 8, 1989, the arboretum was officially founded by former mayor Hansjörg Seeh, although it had been in operation since 1896
In 2005, Angela Busch was awarded the Sonja Bernadotte Medal for Garden Culture for her diploma thesis “Concept for the Arboretum Günterstal (Freiburg i. Br.)”.
The former district forester in Günterstal, Hubertus Nimsch, is responsible for the initiation and current design as one of the most valuable of the 200 German arboretums, and he made a decisive contribution to this even after his retirement.
On April 13, 2018, 18 young oaks from different continents were planted in an open area of the arboretum in a joint action by the Freiburg forestry office, the local association Günterstal, and members of the association "Freunde des Stadtwald-Arboretums", grown in the greenhouses of Hubertus Nimsch. With this final act, the 81-year-old retired from his work at the arboretum. The oaks from three continents - Asia, Europe and North America - are intended to show the diversity of the genus, as the head of the forestry office, Nicole Schmalfuss, explained in her farewell speech to Nimsch.