Saving Trees, Not Chopping Holiday

TreePeople founding director Andy Lipkis always has mixed feelings about the Christmas tradition of decorating trees.

He’s not against holiday cheer, but “in this time especially, when we realize more and more trees are needed in the world, especially with the greenhouse effect, it seems crazy to go on killing trees” for a few days’ use at Christmas, Lipkis says. Many people buy live Christmas trees instead of cut ones, but the live trees often die due to improper care.

“I know that today buying a (cut) Christmas tree is like buying a cabbage. It’s a crop” raised for just one use, Lipkis added, “but still, it’s a waste. . . . If you’re going to be using the life of this tree, at least put some thought into planting trees somewhere else.”

An alternate way to celebrate Christmas is by participating in TreePeople’s tree-dedication program. Through this program, money donated is used to plant single trees and groves in someone’s memory or honor. Cards acknowledging the gifts can be sent.

“The first year we did this, we had laundry tags printed up, and we hung them on stakes” by the trees to acknowledge the donations, Lipkis says. “The planting site looked like a golf course.” Nowadays, no tags hang on the dedicated trees, but the TreePeople staff can tell donors the approximate location of the trees their money helped plant.

The dedication program is modeled after the Jewish National Fund’s fund-raising program for Israel, through which “the symbol of building the country was to convert the desert to forest” by planting trees in individuals’ memory, Lipkis says.

Yet TreePeople’s program began, aptly enough, organically.

“People started sending us money in memory of people anyhow, and we wanted to do something for our donors,” Lipkis says. To date, almost 26,000 dedicated trees have been planted.

Those who’d like to have small live Christmas trees also can purchase young potted pines through TreePeople’s nursery, which is open from noon to 5 p.m. on weekends.

Would-be adopters of these trees should know, though, that the trees aren’t pruned to look like commercially raised Christmas trees. “They’re less bushy, more kind of Charlie-Browny,” says Cor Trowbridge, TreePeople’s volunteer coordinator.

And Lipkis suggests the live pines not be kept inside too long, lest they sicken.