Your live Christmas tree has given you so much pleasure over the holiday season. It was the centrepiece of your Christmas decorations, and the focal point for gatherings. Presents were piled underneath, to be gleefully ripped open on Christmas morning. Then Christmas comes to an end, and it’s time to take down all the decorations and return your house to normal. What happens to your used tree? It needs to be recycled or repurposed.
Many trees are just hauled out to the curb for the city or township to pick up. Ideally, they will mulch it for use in municipal parks and gardens, or use it for soil cover on new road embankments until grass fully takes root. There’s nothing wrong with that; however, you can also use much of your old Christmas tree to beautify your home and garden for the coming year. Here are seven ways to extend your tree’s usefulness beyond the holiday:
1. A Backyard Bird Sanctuary
A really fun and easy thing to do with your tree is to create a backyard bird sanctuary. You can set it up in the tree stand, or just lay it on its side in a quiet part of your backyard. Once you’ve found the ideal location, hang homemade suet cakes from the branches. Suet is a solidified mix of fats, which can help wintering birds maintain their body temperature in cold weather. These cakes are a great idea for cold climates, and are a fun activity to make with children.
The recipe is simple: two parts melted fat, like lard or beef fat, mixed with equal amounts of cornmeal and one part natural peanut butter (no added sugar). Place the mix in a tuna or cat food can and freeze until it holds its shape. Place the suet in a sturdy mesh bag, or a wire suet cage if you have one. Add dried fruit, nuts, or seeds to your suet as an extra special treat.
2. Protect your perennial plants and trees:
Used tree boughs are a great way to protect perennial plants and trees. Winter mulching is important for your perennial plants, in that it moderates temperatures that their roots are exposed to. The freeze/thaw cycle can kill roots in the top few centimetres of the soil, and mulch helps maintain a constant temperature for the parts of the tree that are underground.
Cut the tree boughs off and place them around your perennial and tree bases. You can also use other Christmas evergreen decorations as winter mulch around shrubs, perennial plants, trees, and your whole garden. Add the needles that you sweep up around your tree to your mulch. Pile the greens and needles around 12-14 cm high for shrubs, and 8-10 cm for perennials flowers. In the spring, just put them out with the garden clippings or yard waste.
3. Use the trunk for pot risers:
You can use your old tree to create accent pieces, like pot risers for your plants. Cut the trunk across the grain into varying lengths, and use the pieces to break up the line of pots and help create more visually interesting levels. You can leave the pot risers bare and rustic, or paint them to suit your decor.
4. Make garden edgers:
Cut your Christmas tree trunk into thin discs, about 3-5 cm thick, and use them to edge your garden in spring. This makes for a natural and rustic landscape feature; and then replace them the following year, when they start to break down. It’s an eco-friendly way to add to your garden’s appeal.
5. Homemade trivets and coasters:
This is a really fun and easy DIY project to make useful and pretty objects that make excellent gifts, or that you can keep for yourself.
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- You’ll need:
- one log (10-15 cm in diameter)
- saw (band saw) – you can use a hand saw, but it’ll take longer
- sander (electric) – again, you can do this manually, but it’ll take longer
- clear-coat (polyurethane)
- brush
- stain (optional)
Start with the tree trunk, stripped of branches. Cut the pieces into slices; 3-5 cm thick at the base, and 1.3 cm (½ inch) thick further up. Use the larger pieces for trivets, the mid-sized ones for coasters, and the smallest as tree ornaments for next Christmas.
Once that’s done, start sanding. Use an electric sander to get the disks as smooth as possible. Try applying the wood to the sander, instead of the other way around, for a smoother surface. Hold the sander in your lap and press the pieces down on the sander. Wear gloves to avoid sanding your fingers, and either glasses or protective eyewear to protect your eyes from stray slivers of wood.
Once they’re sanded, you can then stain them if you want, or just apply the polyurethane finish. Use a water-based finish that needs to be brushed on. It will go on easier, and won’t yellow over time. You may need to apply several coats to get the look you want. For the Christmas ornaments, write the year of the tree on one side before applying the finish.
6. More crafts! Fun gnomes, elves, and Santas from twigs:
Here’s a super fun craft idea from Garden Therapy that transforms the twigs from your Christmas tree into adorable garden gnomes, or anything else your imagination can come up with.
You’ll need:
- Dry branches, about the thickness of a pencil
- Pruners
- Pencil sharpener
- Vegetable peeler
- Craft paints
- Paint brushes
- Permanent marker
- Acrylic sealer
Using a pencil sharpener, sharpen the ends of the little twigs that you prune from the branches. Then, using a vegetable peeler, shave off just one side on an angle. This will be the face. Then paint in the beard and the red hat, or whatever colour strikes your fancy. Use a sharpie to draw on the eyes. When the paint is dry, spray on acrylic sealer, and they’re all set for a lovely garden scene.
Replant your tree:
Christmas trees don’t have to be cut down before you bring them inside. If you dug up your tree, or bought one with the root ball intact, you can replant it and then reuse it next Christmas.
There are a few things you should know first, before you decide to go this route. First, you’ll need a smaller tree, as they transition better from outdoors to indoors and back again. Secondly, you’ll only realistically be able to keep it in the house for one to one and a half weeks; it just won’t re-adapt to outside conditions if kept inside for longer. If you can work with these criteria, then a live, reusable Christmas tree may be for you.
When you first purchase the tree, dig a hole big enough for the tree’s root ball where you want the tree to grow. The ground may freeze between when you purchase your tree and when you try to replant it — that’s fine. When you bring your live tree inside, place it in the coolest place possible, away from heaters and radiators. Wrap the root ball in burlap, plastic, or wet sphagnum moss; it must be kept damp the entire time it’s in the house. Use ice cubes to keep it moist and cool.
When you’re ready to replant, remove the burlap, plastic, moss, or whatever is covering the root ball, and place the tree in the hole that you previously dug. Backfill the hole with dirt, and and cover the dirt with several centimetres of mulch. Don’t fertilize right now; that is better done in the spring, when you can treat it as a newly planted young tree.
For professional tree service in Richmond Hill, call Dave Lund Tree Service and Forestry Co Ltd. at (905) 884-0511 to book an appointment, or use our online contact form. We are a family owned-and-operated business, serving the York Region for more than 40 years. Our team of International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborists has years of experience in the art of planting, caring, and maintaining different types of trees using state-of-the-art tools and equipment for the best tree care and removal.