Tips for buying a Christmas tree – part 1
A beautiful Christmas tree which stays fresh over the whole of the festive period can help to make your family's Christmas special. Here are some simple tips you can follow when buying a Christmas tree this year.
1. Buy a real Christmas tree: the chemicals and embodied energy in an artificial Christmas tree, together with the distance it has travelled to get to you, make artificial trees an environmental no-no. Most artificial trees are used for a few years only, meaning that their environmental impact is much greater than that of a real tree. So unless you have an artificial Christmas tree already, don’t buy one!
2. Choose a quality retailer: Christmas trees spring up all over the place from late November onwards, but there is a vast range of quality on offer and it’s a good idea to be a bit picky about who you buy from if you want a good tree that is going to look good and last over the Christmas period. The best way to be sure about getting a good tree is to go to a member of the British Christmas Tree Growers’ Association. This helps to ensure that the tree you buy will be from a sustainably managed plantation and grown by a specialist Christmas tree farmer taking care to produce a high-quality crop.
3. Choose the right Christmas tree variety: most importantly, consider what variety of tree is right for your needs, as there are more than you might think. Do you require your tree to retain its needles? If so, you need a non-drop tree (of course, all Christmas trees lose some needles, but this simply means that they are more likely to retain their needles for longer). The most popular non-drop Christmas tree in the UK today is the nordman fir which has foliage which is quite soft to the touch. If needle retention is not important – perhaps because you only want your tree for a week or so over Christmas – then the traditional Norway spruce is the most popular option. Think too about the height of the Christmas tree – it’s a good idea to measure up before you go to buy your tree and take a tape measure with you to make sure you get the perfect size.
4. Ask where your Christmas tree was grown: Christmas trees are hauled long distances and many are imported from Christmas tree-growing countries in Europe such as Denmark. If you want to reduce the environmental impact of your Christmas tree, then it’s obviously a good idea to buy a tree grown as locally as possible. Not only does this reduce the carbon impact of your purchase, it also increases the likelihood of a fresher Christmas tree which has not been stored for as long.
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