Love the idea of a real tree, hate the idea of killing/wasting trees

[TheBeesKnee]

This is probably silly but every year I want a real Christmas tree. I love the shape and the smell.

Then in the run up to Christmas DP and I mooch around looking at trees and back out because of how sad and wasteful it is to cut an entire tree down just to decorate it for a month.

I hate our old plastic tree as well, it is very old and crooked and looks a bit worse for wear, with various twigs that have fallen off over the years.

Does anyone else feel the same and if so how do you get over this dilemma?

The other thing is that I have absolutely no problem with buying fresh flowers for the house every fortnight in the spring/summer, but a tree just feels different somehow?!

Think of the trees as a crop. They’re farmed, just like food crops and non-food crops (cotton etc).

Also if you consume paper and cardboard boxes then YABU because they are also farmed tree products.

Make a resolution not to buy cut flowers every couple of weeks all year and have a real tree for Christmas instead?

That should assuage your guilty conscience.

We burn ours in the fire pit in spring when we are sitting outside so it doesn’t go to waste

If you keep it watered it stays alive.

Everything that’s alive dies. The life cycle of a Christmas tree is five odd years and in that time it contributes positively to the environment.
But the world wouldn’t be a better place if every Christmas tree lived for its whole lifespan of 100’s of years. They can grow to 40 m, cutting out light and making the soil too acidic. Nature is about balance.

I quite like that oak structure someone posted although it looks a bit like a GCSE DT project.

They don't go to waste. We use the branches as firelighters and to make tunnels for wild animals around the garden. The trunks get sawn up and burned then the ash spread under the apple trees to help them crop.

If you use the tree responsibly, it's fine. Nature isn't designed to hang around forever. It's fine to use up natural things as long as they don't go to waste.

We do. Store it for a year to season it, then chop the trunk into logs.

We always had a potted tree growing up. We'd buy one around 5ft and pop it on a box to get the height we wanted, then keep it in the garden and bring it in each year. You have to water them (obviously) but they grow a little each year and less likely to die than cut and we used to bring it in first week of December until 12th night.
When we bought our first house, FIL gave us a potted tree and it lasted 3 Christmases until I got annoyed with the sap and bugs and bought a really good fake one. It's still going in the garden.

We have 4 trees every year. One is a tiny real one which belongs to DS and is in his room. It is potted and lives outside mostly. This is year 3 and it is still very small. When it is too big, we will plant it.

The second is also in a pot and is brought in for Christmas, but bigger. It started off quite small, but is about 4ft now.

The third goes in the playroom. It is a bit tatty, but DC love it. It is about 3 ft, plastic and was bought in a charity shop a few years ago. I don't see us parting with it until dc are a lot bigger, so we will use it for 10+ years on top of what the last owners got out of it.

The main tree is a fake Balsam Hill one. It is a gorgeous tree that I really love to see every year. We have had it 5 years and it still looks cracking. I fully intend to use it for many more, but if I was replacing it, I would hire one. There is a local Christmas tree farm who replant for the next year. If we had lived here before we bought the BH one, I would have been doing that instead.

My fake tree is about 20 years old now and still looking good.

i also hate the idea of a cut tree, wonderful as they are. I get bizarrely upset seeing them all out for recycling, abandoned, at the start of January! Our council has a kerbside tree collection which is good.

I felt the same. I’m a plant person and have a house full of giant pot plants but always loved a real tree as a kid.
One Xmas eve my parents secretly swapped our crappy old artificial tree for a real one while we kids were asleep. Truly magic Christmas morning.

I hate artificial plants in general but still didn’t want to kill a tree every year.

Got over it by buying a fully tinsel tree, 1950s style!

I’ve tried to rescue abandoned potted trees before but to no avail!

SoupDragon those trees are not "abandoned" though- they have been placed here to be picked up, generally for recycling or composting.

I think if it as exactly the same as a bunch of daffodils: grown in a field for cutting.
Tree farms manage the land, plant each year to replace what has been cut, care for and feed the trees.

We always have a real tree and I don’t feel guilty about it. They’re grown as a crop, much like any other, and such fast-growing trees do use up a lot of CO2 while growing.

After its fortnight or so of glory, ours will invariably go to make compost or mulch for the council.

You clearly missed the tone of my post.

I don't understand this argument. A real tree has helped the planet just by existing. A real tree is bio degradable. Plastic trees are reusable but you'd have to do so forever as they take AGES to degrade. You do more harm by using plastic trees even if you reuse them for 20+ years.

This!

But a small potted real tree, you can use the same tree each year

Christmas trees live years longer than 5 years! We buy a new one with roots nearly every year, keep them in pots for a couple of years and then plant. Our oldest is 16 years old, resplendent and as tall as the house! (Luckily we’re on a farm!). Every time we lose a pet we plant a Xmas tree over where they’re buried.

I don’t think potted trees like coming in the house particularly, so our trees stand outside the living room windows with lights and decorations. We just decorate the mantle inside and other pots of lights/baubles. I find too much decoration inside a bit claustrophobic/tacky.

Will you be having turkey at Xmas? Same thing

I love having real Christmas trees. They just seem more 'Chrismasy' to me!
Our local council collects them for mulch and also a farm near us chips them for their goats. They're lovely.

As ppsaid,you can rent them

We give ours to a goat farmer, they like to chew through them

meglethesecond
exactly what happened to our poor tree this year! I am feeling really guilty about the poor dab.
I think I might decorate it with outdoor lights and then buy another one in a pot.
Though my friend has a HUGE tree in her, same size as ours, living room and it looks amazing!

No it isn't. Food (in general!) is a necessity. A tree in your house is not.