Pining for Live Trees
It was an idea that was supposed to push Christmas trees off the chopping block: Keep pines in pots so they can be replanted after the holidays and enjoyed forever in your own backyard. Living Christmas trees had fits and starts of popularity in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, but this holiday season, at long last, they seem to be gaining real ground.
“If this demand carries through, we’ll be sold out earlier than we’ve ever sold out,” said Tom Givvin, owner of the Marina Del Rey Garden Center. For 22 years, Givvin has been selling Christmas trees that are not cut but potted in soil. He has already sold more than 100 of the 600 living Christmas trees he ordered--and that’s before the peak days for Christmas tree buying, during the second and third weekends of December.
Last year, Californians bought 3.7 million real (cut or potted) Christmas trees, according to the California Christmas Tree Assn. Nationally, living trees made up about 5% of sales.
“Some growers are seeing a big increase in their live tree business,” said National Christmas Tree Assn. spokesman Rick Dungey. That increase has been fueled by consumers’ increasing concern for the environment and by rising prices in cut trees.
“The cost of the cut tree has gone up to the point that the living tree is looking more appetizing,” said Shawn Callaway, owner of Pacific West Christmas Tree Company in San Luis Obispo.
Living trees cost about a third more than cut trees and can be purchased at most nurseries. Few Christmas tree lots carry them.
Callaway said a relative shortage of noble firs this year--it is the most popular type of tree sold in this country--is also increasing consumer interest in living trees.
Some shoppers are not only buying living trees, but buying them early to get the best selection. Unlike cut trees, which can dry out even before Christmas comes around, living trees can be kept outside and watered until they’re ready to be brought inside.
Sold in 2-, 5-, 7- and 15-gallon pots, they range from 1 to 8 feet in height. They are also heavier and more cumbersome to transport than cut trees, but their benefits outweigh the negatives for consumers who believe they’re saving a tree from being chopped down and later abandoned on a street corner.
Like any plant, there can be problems with keeping a living Christmas tree alive. Some of them have not lived in their pots long enough to be stable. Moving them indoors increases the shock to the tree and may make it more susceptible to premature death. Most potted Christmas trees are pine. They need full sun and can only tolerate being indoors for about 10 days.
But even if a living Christmas tree is in good condition when it is purchased and well cared for while inside, it can still die when it is moved outside if the climate is not appropriate for the species. Callaway recommends that buyers of living trees make sure they understand the optimum conditions for the tree to increase its chances of survival. If they don’t, they may, despite their good intentions, end up with a dead tree on their hands.
For consumers who like the idea of a living tree but aren’t up for the responsibility after the holidays, there are people like Jon Jay. For the last nine post-holiday seasons, Jay has been driving around Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties rescuing the potted Christmas trees that the owners don’t know what to do with.
“Like a lot of people, I was always depressed after Christmas seeing all these dead trees in the gutter and the city having no landfill space to put them in,” said Jay, whose Treecyclers group picks up between 300 and 400 unwanted trees a year, replanting them in city and state parks.
“In the few years we’ve been going to [Angels Gate Park in San Pedro],” Jay said, “we’ve created a forest.”
Treecyclers, a nonprofit group based in Hollywood, charges $10 to pick up and replant potted Christmas trees. It can be reached at (323) 876-8575.
