It’s the holiday season for decking the halls and celebrating around your favorite Christmas tree.

Looking for an eco-friendly solution after the holidays? Planting your Christmas tree in your landscape is a practical way to remember holiday memories.

3 Creative Ideas for Repurposing Your Christmas Trees

You don’t want to buy a real Christmas tree only to throw it out after the New Year. How can you sustainably repurpose your Christmas tree after the holidays?

Here are three creative ideas for reusing your cut Christmas tree in the New Year:

1. Create a living bird feeder in your backyard:  Put your entire Christmas tree in your garden and decorate it with suet, cranberries, popcorn, oranges, and sunflower seeds. Birds will flock to your Christmas tree to eat all the treats you prepared.  When spring arrives and your Christmas tree has gone from green to brown, consider putting it in your custom pond for koi to swim and hide from predators. You can also repurpose the entire tree by grinding it for mulch.

2. Use the twigs and branches for crafts: AmericanForests.org suggests cutting off the tree’s branches and using the trunk to edge your garden. Pine needles can be used in sachets or potpourri and steeped in hot water to make tea. You can create coasters from the Christmas tree’s trunk and branches if you enjoy woodworking.

3. Burn the tree’s branches: Spread the ash over your garden for a potassium boost. Also, pine tree ash works like lime to neutralize acidic soils.

 

Step-by-Step Guide to Planting Your Christmas Tree

When you buy a ball-and-burlap Christmas tree, you’re not only decorating for the holidays—you’re planting a lasting addition to your backyard.

First, find the right Christmas tree to add value to your existing landscape. Then, you need to find the perfect spot to plant the tree. Depending on your local climate, one of these Christmas trees will work perfectly in your backyard:

• Blue spruce
• Douglas fir
• Fraser fir
• Norway spruce
• White pine.

Before buying your perfect Christmas tree, ensure that your new tree will have a growth pattern that fits your indoor and outdoor aesthetics. You also want your live Christmas tree to have the following characteristics:

• A tree with supple needles and a deep green color
• The tree’s size that will fit your home’s interior and exterior
• An intact and well-watered root ball
• A tree shape that fits your Christmas ideal and will add to your outdoor space.

When you bring your Christmas tree home, keep it sheltered in cool temperatures, such as in an unheated garage. Wait to put up your tree closer to Christmas Eve and only keep it indoors for 10 days.

Your Christmas tree is dormant right now. After 10 days, it will start to come out of dormancy. Put your tree back in your unheated garage or ensure it’s sheltered from drying winter winds but in a cool place so the tree stays dormant.

Avoid putting your tree near a heater or a fireplace because of the fire hazard. You’ll need a container to hold your tree, the rootball, and the surrounding dirt. Plus, your Christmas tree needs to stay upright, so the container holding it should secure the tree.

Ensure that your ball-and-burlap Christmas tree is regularly watered to keep it from drying out while indoors and after Christmas to keep it alive until you plant it.

Next, you need easy step-by-step directions to give your Christmas tree success in your backyard. Here are ball-and-burlap tree planting instructions, courtesy of ThisOldHouse.com:

Before Christmas:

• Prepare the planting site by ensuring sunlight for your live Christmas tree.
• Excavate a hole approximately 2’ in diameter and 18” deep.
• Keep the soil you removed in a cool, sheltered place so it doesn’t freeze. You’ll need this dirt to backfill the hole.
• Put a board over the hole to keep everyone safe and insulate it with leaves.

After Christmas:

• If you didn’t have a chance to prepare the hole, you can still excavate above as long as the ground isn’t frozen.
• Transition the tree outside to get it acclimated to the climate. Put the tree in an unheated garage or another sheltered area for a few days.
• Continue to water your tree thoroughly, including right before you plant it in the ground.

Planting your live Christmas tree in your backyard:

• Take off any wire baskets or burlap.
• Place the tree in the hole with its best features facing toward your home’s viewing.
• Ensure the tree’s root flare sits slightly above the ground.
• Use the stored soil to backfill the hole and tamp it down to remove air pockets.
• Irrigate your live Christmas tree to settle the soil.
• Mulch around the tree to regulate soil temperature and hold in moisture.

If you follow these directions, your real Christmas tree should continue to anchor into the ground and be a beautiful focal point in your landscape.

However, if you don’t follow these instructions, including watering your tree and removing it from your house after 10 days, your tree can go into shock or die.

Tree Bubblers: Keep Your Real Christmas Tree Thriving Outside

You must provide supplemental water to keep your Christmas tree alive and vibrant during the summer. Tree bubblers offer the perfect irrigation source to water your tree economically without wasting it.
Tree bubblers get to the root of the problem with small irrigation heads designed to flood the ground surrounding the tree’s base. The water percolates deep in the soil at the root ball to establish deep roots.

Pressure compensators ensure a steady flow rate even at low pressure, reducing excess runoff.

Keep Your Christmas Tree and Backyard Flourishing with Tree Bubblers

Discover how K-Rain’s tree bubblers promote the vibrancy of your live Christmas tree in your backyard. Your other trees and shrubs will benefit from bubblers, too.

You can find an irrigation contractor on our website to design and build your tree bubbler system.

Need help with your K-Rain Sprinkler System? Reach out to customer services through our contact form.

Sources:
AmericanForests.org, 8 Creative Ways to Recycle, or Reuse, Your Christmas Tree.
GlenWildGardens.com, The Purchase and Care of a Live-Root Christmas Tree.
RHS.org.uk, Wood Ash: Using in the Garden.