Living Tree Boom Is Dying : This Holiday, Environment May Lose to Economy

Maybe it’s the recession. Or maybe people aren’t as concerned about the environment as they used to be. Or maybe they miss that heavy piney aroma you get from dead ones.

Whatever the reason, it appears that, with some exceptions, the Westside “living Christmas tree” boom is over.

“We’re just not selling as many as we used to,” said Ken Kawata, standing by a row of unsold and forlorn-looking potted evergreens--some bearing cards that read “Living Christmas Trees, Enhancing the Environment”--at Merrihew’s Sunset Gardens nursery in Santa Monica. “A few years ago they were selling really good, but then last year we got stuck with about 15 of them. This year we bought 10 big ones, and look, we still got seven left.”

“The live ones aren’t as popular as they used to be,” said Ken Wells, manager at Armstrong Garden Center on Sepulveda Boulevard in West Los Angeles. “I wish we could sell more than we do.”

“The year before last there was a big environmental push for everybody to have live trees,” said Rena Kilmor of Tree People, a Los Angeles organization dedicated to promoting tree planting in the city. “Then last year you didn’t hear very much about it. Now you hardly hear anything about it.”

It’s enough to make you wonder, what gives here? Environmentally responsible living Christmas trees not selling on the environmentally conscious Westside? It’s especially odd when you consider that, according to the Milwaukee-based National Christmas Tree Assn., sales of living Christmas trees are up nationally.

“We’ve seen a slight increase (in living Christmas tree sales) over the past couple of years,” said association spokeswoman Joan Geiger, adding that living Christmas trees represent about 5% to 7% of all Christmas tree sales in the U.S.

But while Geiger said no specific statistics were available on living Christmas tree sales in Southern California, based on spot checks of Westside nurseries it’s clear that there are not as many live Christmas trees around this year as there used to be.

(A few exceptions: At the Armstrong Garden Center on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, manager Chuck Bybee said, “I bet we’ve gone through 60, 70 live trees. . . . I wish I could get more.” And at a lot operated by Boy Scouts at Wilshire Boulevard and Federal Avenue in West Los Angeles, lot manager Ingrid Guire said living tree sales were “pretty close, maybe even better” than last year.)

The reason most often cited for people not buying as many living Christmas trees this year is money--or rather, the lack of it. On average, living Christmas trees cost at least one-third more than their dying cousins, and sometimes much more.

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At the West Los Angeles Armstrong Garden Center, for example, a four-to-five-foot living Monterey pine, the cheapest of the living Christmas trees, will set you back $29.95. For the same price, you can get a cut Douglas fir that’s two feet taller. Other retail outlets charge $40 for a living four-foot Aleppo pine, $80 for a seven-foot Monterey pine, $140 for a seven-foot Colorado spruce, and so on. They aren’t cheap.

There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a roadside entrepreneur who made a lot of money selling living Christmas trees. Later, after the entrepreneur was long gone, his customers noticed that despite all the water and care they gave their trees, the trees kept getting sicker until finally they died. When the buyers pulled the dead tree out of the pot, they found not roots but a sawed-off stump. Even if the story isn’t true, there’s a moral: buy your living tree from a reputable dealer.

Another potential problem with living Christmas trees is that they require a lot of care, and aren’t geared toward extensive indoor stays. If you buy a living Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving and put it inside your house, chances are it won’t survive the holidays.

“Live trees don’t like being indoors,” says Tree People’s Kilmor. “They can only handle three to five days, tops.”

Kilmor adds that if you buy a living tree, you really should decide ahead of time what you’re going to do with it after Christmas. Keep it potted until next year? Plant it in the yard? Plant it somewhere else?

“Live trees are wonderful things, but you should think it out before you buy one,” Kilmor said. “We get a lot of calls after the holidays from people asking us where we are going to plant their tree. But we can’t do that. People should remember that a living tree requires a commitment on their part.”

There are, however, some organizations that will help you get rid of--uh, plant--your living tree if you can’t handle it yourself. An organization called Treecyclers, for example, will pick up and plant your tree after Christmas for a $7 to $10 fee to cover costs; also, Treecyclers will rent you a living tree for Christmas for between $15 and $60, depending on size and type. Call (213) 876-8575.

You can also give your living tree to the Wildlife Way Station in Little Tujunga Canyon. Call (818) 899-5201.

Finally, if smell is a vital part of Christmas for you, you should know that a living tree won’t give off as much pine fragrance as a cut one will.

All this isn’t meant to discourage you from getting a living Christmas tree if you can afford it, and have a place for it, and won’t miss the dying-tree smell. A lot of people prefer them for the simple fact that they’re living things, not dying ones.

“I bring mine into my house every year,” says Barbara Bray, a horticulturist at the West Los Angeles Armstrong Garden Center. “It’s nice that it’s alive.”