If you want to grow your very own, lovely-smelling Fraser Fir, look no further. You’ll have to nurture these trees once they get to around 4′ tall to achieve the ideal ‘Christmas tree’ shape, but with a bit of work you’ll have a fantastic feature in the garden for years to come. This year, potted Fraser Firs range from 120-175cm in height.
When buying a potted Christmas tree, what you don't want is a 'normal' tree that's been dug up and shoved in a pot. Let loose in the ground, the trees will tend to spread their roots much more widely, and when trees are dug up many of these tend to be cut off or damaged to squish it into the pot. That pretty much inevitably means the tree is going to struggle to survive. Our trees are grown using 'Easiroot' pots, sunk into the ground. These pots have teeny little holes to allow micro-roots to poke through and benefit from being in the ground, but with the major root system contained to the pot. When we're ready to harvest, the whole thing - along with the pot - just gets pulled up out of the ground and hey presto, you have yourself a living Christmas tree that's got a much better chance of ... well ... living.
The tree will arrive in this agricultural "growing" pot, which (because it's been buried for several years!) will be muddy and in some cases bursting at the seams from all those healthy roots! The pot is designed for growing and transport (in a bag to contain any mud!), but you will probably want to use a decorative pot around it for Christmas, and replace the plastic pot when the tree is ready to go back outside.
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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!
