Big, bushy bottoms and spindly branches - how to make sure you avoid a Christmas tree disaster this year

Traders are warning that this year’s trees are a bad crop. So can an arboreal disaster be avoided, asks Phoebe Luckhurst
Threadbare: a bedraggled effort of a tree

Most of the time you have few opinions on nature. Indeed, there is little about which you could have an opinion: you are a Londoner, and nature barely exists. If it does, it is unwanted, irritating: foxes keening at 2am, or pigeons edging in on alfresco meals, dragging their club feet and flapping filthy, ragged wings.

Then December arrives and you have opinions. You think about pine needles and you quibble about branches. You scrutinise evergreens, muttering sarcastically about “sometimes greens”; you laugh at this “nature joke”. You get worked up about bark and get wide-eyed about bushy bottoms. It is Christmas time and your tree is a bridge back to childhood, when everything was nicer, including you.

This symbolism is why the tree is such a loaded purchase. It is why you have screamed at your parents when you get home on Christmas Eve and discover Mum has already decorated the tree; it is why you and your housemates are spending four hours in Wembley on a Saturday morning at a Christmas tree market to select a specimen. You anticipate tears; they will doubtless be warranted.

The stakes (branches?) are higher this year. British Christmas tree-growers are warning about the arrival of cheap continental trees. Seven years ago there was a “drought” in the UK and tens of thousands of trees were planted in Denmark and Germany. These trees are now ready, and as the euro is weak, they are being imported for prices that undercut the home-grown market. The average 6ft British tree costs £50; an imported Nordman fir is expected to go for far less.

However, the real issue is the substandard quality of these trees. British farmers warn that the foreign versions are likely inferior, as last winter on the Continent was a mild one, and the resulting trees are oddballs, with big bushy bottoms and long spindly branches. They are unbalanced, and they are difficult to decorate evenly; for that you need an even bush. Some growers are reporting very poor firs.

Clearly, it’s a total disaster. Crap trees will make the scrums in the yards more vicious and will give sly sellers another upper hand in a temporary supply-and-demand economy that already favours them. Basically, a bad tree will ruin Christmas.

Then there are the questions that recur every year, when the arms race starts in earnest. When should you get yours? If tall specimens are spindly, should you plump for something plumper? Why does a tarted-up twig cost this much? ’Tis the season to be jolly but you’re stamping your foot because the bus driver won’t let you get on the 19 with your spruce.

Richard Haddon is one of the partners in Pukka Trees, which has paired up with Grotto Outré to launch a market selling trees and boozy hot chocolates in a car park in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. It’s opening to the public tomorrow, and Haddon has spent the past month speaking to 50 British suppliers to source his trees.

“The idea is to make it as simple and easy as possible,” explains Haddon, who has selected Nordmans as they “don’t drop their needles”. His trees start at three feet, and you can pre-order firs up to 15ft tall, though they’re “focusing on four- to six-footers as most people in east London live in flats. The idea is that they pick out the tree they want and take it home there and then.

“I think it’s really nostalgic,” he agrees. “People in London might be far from their family and, for many, setting up the tree is an event. It’s when you make time for friends you wouldn’t see. There’s a tree ceremony, and it’s reminiscent of childhood.”

Typical mistakes include not measuring the size of the space available. “Know what you need and don’t get carried away,” he warns. And select the right quality and type of tree. Haddon has two dogs and knows “dogs can’t walk on the dropped needles”.

When should you buy? Haddon is focusing most of his manpower in the first two weekends after opening (weekend in this instance running from Thursday to Sunday). “That’s the busiest time, and then it tails off as many Londoners leave the capital for Christmas.”

Christmas is the same every year (carols, mistletoe, John Lewis ad), but trees are a growing business. Pines and Needles, founded by Scottish brothers Sam and Josh Lyle, dispenses firs of varying heights to regular punters, as well as corporate clients — the BBC, Wembley and the National History Museum. Louis Tomlinson furnishes his Hampstead home with a Pines and Needles tree; reportedly, high-pitched Directioners have fought to accompany the delivery driver to his house. The pair also sell wholesale to garden centres, florists and markets, and they expect to make sales of at least £2.3 million this Christmas. The business, founded outside a dry cleaner’s in Maida Vale in 1994, is now growing at a rate of 30 per cent a year.

Obviously, this success is partly down to universal demand — everyone needs a Christmas tree — and partly because fashion has turned it into a glorious totem of capitalism that we’ve all bought into, literally. The London EDITION in Soho has commissioned Mark Colle to design its Christmas tree; Colle is a florist who has designed flower walls for Raf Simons at Dior. The “tree” will in fact be hundreds of mosses, ivies and wreaths of fir, woven together to create a “mosaic”. Jeweller Boodles has created the Savoy’s tree: it will be decorated with bright-pink bows and crackers and will be unveiled on Saturday. East London loft Bistrotheque has commissioned Prem Sahib to create a “site-specific artwork for Christmas”.

The best winter pop-ups

1/11

In the past, Mayfair hotel Claridge’s has commissioned John Galliano, Alber Elbaz and Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana to create its tree. This year the hotel invited Christopher Bailey, CEO and chief creative at Burberry, to design it. It was unveiled last week.

“The tree is made up of more than 100 shimmering gold and silver umbrellas,” explains hotel manager Knut Wylde, “with over 77,000 lights, which are triggered when guests walk past the tree. Our lobby is even more buzzy than usual at the moment, particularly as everyone seems to want to post on Instagram or Snapchat. This really is our favourite time of year.”

In London, money glows on trees: make sure yours is an investment.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in