It takes dedication to get your Christmas tree looking spruce

Dec 4 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

A relatively new business with much older roots, Karen Dent explores the a festive feel-good industry that is now firmly established in the North East.

ESSENTIALLY a German tradition that didn’t become popular in Britain until a picture appeared of Queen Victoria and her German-born husband Prince Albert decorating one in the 1840s, the Christmas tree is now big business in the UK.

But until the mid-1970s, very few of these trees were specially grown for the job. Sellers lopped the tops of fir trees in hedges or forests and only turned to cultivation when they realised customers would pay more for a tree that looked the part.

Ensuring a Christmas tree is Christmas tree-shaped is a big job, according to the Forestry Commission, which grows and sells the evergreens from sites around the North East.

“The demand is for shaped trees now. They used to come out of the forest as they were, but we had to start growing our own and pruning them to shape,” said Michael Laing, the local area manager for the Forestry Commission at Hamsterley Forest, which has been in the Christmas tree business for more than 20 years.

“It is a case of forming them into a nice conical shape. You have to keep them sheared.”

The site grows three types of trees for Christmas – the Nordmann fir, the most expensive and most popular because it doesn’t drop its needles, plus pine and the traditional Norway spruce.

“Normally in the past, we have grown 100% of our trees, but now we get some from other Forestry Commission sites – spruce from North Yorkshire, fir from Wales and pine from Scotland, until we’ve grown our stocks again,” said Mr Laing.

“All our stocks are older now – they are 10,12, 15ft. We’ve got some growing areas, we let out some agricultural fields which we’ve got back to plant. You can’t do anything overnight in the Christmas tree business.

“They grow about 1ft a year, so it’s four or five years before you have a tree you can sell. The 6-7ft is the most popular size, so that would be seven years before you would see a return on your money.”

Around 30% of the trees at Hamsterley are harvested annually and the same number is replanted. The centre sells around round 700-800 Christmas trees each year, with customers forking out an average of £17 for a spruce and £25 for a fir or a pine. The busiest sales period is the middle weekend in December.

“Real Christmas tree popularity is cyclical. In the 1980s, we stopped growing them because artificial trees were getting very popular,” said Mr Laing.

“That’s the trouble with Christmas trees, you have to keep growing them all the time. There was a break in growth for 10 years, then real trees grew in popularity again and growers had none to sell. It was countrywide.”

Growing Christmas trees, however, is not a licence to print money, because they need plenty of TLC. In addition to the pruning, the area around the young trees needs to be kept clear or the weeds and long grass damage their growth.

Harry Laidler doesn’t grow his own, but as a Christmas tree seller, his festive firm is not confined to December. He runs Laidler’s fruit and vegetable business in Seaton Delaval with wife Dawn, which was set up from a market garden by his great-grandfather in 1913. Edelweiss Christmas Trees, two doors down from the main business, was established around a decade ago.

Mr Laidler said: “We keep it separate – it sticks in people’s minds, they associated the name with the Christmas tree.”

As a supplier to organisations such as schools, councils and hotels, plus garden centres and retailing to the public, the business handles “a few thousand” trees annually.

“We start organising the trees in March and start to deliver in mid-November to places that want them early and to smaller garden centres,” said Mr Laidler.

“I only sell the best trees, there is a lot that goes into it; we go across to Ireland to see the plantations.”

He also sources trees locally and from the Borders, and like Hamsterley, he has found the Nordmann fir to be the most popular. The retail shop has around 400 trees to choose from at any one time.

Mr Laidler’s interest in Christmas trees started when he was in his teens, when his father gave him 50 or 60 to sell as part of the main business.

“It’s something different,” he said.