£27 – £52
The “Cinco” plastic tree stand is a bestseller for a good reason – it’s an easy, reliable and affordable way to stand your Christmas tree up just as Santa intended. Don’t be misled by “plastic”; these stands are made from high-grade polypropylene (sounds good, doesn’t it?) so they’ll see you through many a festive season.
With two varieties for trees from 4 to 12ft (make sure to pick the right one), the stands feature galvanised pins in the base as well as three strong screws to hold your tree straight and stop it from slipping about. The base also doubles as an easy to fill water reservoir to keep your tree looking as fresh as possible through the season.
Companies and growers measure Christmas trees in lots of ways, so on our website we’ve tried to keep it relatively simple: our measurements in feet are a minimum height to the top of the tree. So, if you order a 6ft tree it will be at least 6ft from the base of the trunk to the tippy top – typically, it will be a bit taller. Don’t forget to account for this potential extra height – sometimes up to 1.5ft for taller trees.
The long bit on the top of the tree (where you put your star or fairy) is called the ‘leader’. This can be quite long on some trees and much shorter on others – just natural variance – so growers account for this when measuring by taking a height to halfway up the leader (halfway between the top set of branches and the top of the tree). Just to confuse things a bit further, the industry standard is centimetre ranges. Here’s a handy conversion:
Tree ordered - Height to halfway up leader:
4ft tree - 125-150cm
5ft tree - 150-175cm
6ft tree - 175-200cm
7ft tree - 200-225cm
8ft tree - 225-250cm
9ft tree - 250-300cm
With natural products it’s not a perfect science, so these ranges act as a guide and your tree may be a little outside of the ranges in either direction.
If you’re putting your tree in any sort of stand, that will add some height to the tree, so don’t forget to factor it in to the overall measurement! If you need a stand, we sell them here.
Bear in mind that the taller your tree, the wider it will be at the base. Nordman Firs and Norway Spruces in particular get quite big and bushy as they get taller, so make sure you’ve got space!