How To Care For Your Christmas Tree - The Lifestyle Blogger UK

Whether you’re going for a real or a fake Christmas tree this year, it’s best to get yourself as prepared as possible before you go buying anything…no matter how excited you are to finally get your tree up! One of the most important questions you need to ask yourself is. What do you look for in a Christmas tree? Here are some great tips on how to care for your Christmas tree, including sustainable Christmas tree options for the eco-conscious.

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Are you all about the height and the shape, or are you more about the bushy-ness and girth of your tree? Or perhaps you don’t really care about the shape, you just want that fresh, crisp smell to fill your home for as long as possible?

To get the best out of your tree and the overall tree buying experience, we have put together a few of our top tips below…

Top tip: Try to pick a spot in your home that doesn’t have full sunlight for too long throughout the day to ensure your tree last as long as it possibly can!

Buying Your Tree

Make sure you go well prepared! Wear appropriate footwear, especially if you’re going to be trekking through a muddy field to chop down or pick out your tree.

Gloves also come in very handy, especially if you’re going to be handling the tree yourself are they are super prickly!

One great tip, especially for real trees is to make sure you take some kind of old blanket or cover you don’t mind getting ruined. many of the trees will have a sticky sap oozing out of them which can really mess up a cars interior.

Measure The Space

We all dream of having large spaces in our homes to proudly place our Christmas trees. However, for most of us, space isn’t all that plentiful so you have to be mindful this when choosing your tree. There isn’t much point in buying an 8ft tree if you only have 5ft of space for it! No matter how badly you want it to create your Christmas wonderland!

If you already have the perfect position in mind, measure the height from floor to ceiling before you head out and buy your tree to ensure you’ve got enough room in your home. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure you have room in your car as well!

Dig Around At The Back

Most of the trees will be out on view to the public but they will often have more in the back if you can’t find your perfect tree. Even if a tree is still in it’s net wrap, just ask a member of staff to cut it off for you so you can see the real shape and condition of the tree. If there isn’t anything wrong with the tree, they won’t mind getting it out for you.

Is Your Tree Healthy?

You can generally tell if a real Christmas tree is healthy or not by looking at its pines/branches. A healthy tree will have a shiny, glossy look to it’s pines and will be bright green in colour. You should also be able to run your hands along any of the branches without loosing any of the needles. If you aren’t sure, lift the tree off the ground and give it a good tap on the floor with it’s trunk and see if many/any pines fall off. If they don’t, you should be OK!

Caring For A Real Christmas Tree

Top tip: If you want your tree to hold it’s pines for as long as possible, spray your trees branches with hairspray before you begin to decorate it. This will help to hold the pine needles on for much, much longer!

Leave It Alone

Once you get your tree home, the first thing you’ll want to do is get it in your house and put it up right away. However, this isn’t the best idea and can actually shorten the life of your tree by quite a bit. When you get your tree home, stick it in a bucket of water in the garage for at least a day before you take it inside.

This will give the tree time to soak up lots of water and get used to it being a little warmer. Imagine you went from being outside in the freezing weather to a warm house quickly, this is a lot for a tree to get used to, so give it time to adjust.

Trim Your Tree

There are normally a few branches at the top and bottom that don’t look right when it’s potted, so give it a good trim. You want to make sure you have enough room around the bottom of the trunk to be able to keep it well watered throughout the Christmas period. Plus, it often looks better and neater once it’s had a good trim.

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Water Your Tree

Even though your tree might not be in the ground anymore, it will still be alive (for a while anyway), so it will require watering like any other house plant. Make sure you keep it hydrated by topping it up every other day, and check every day to see how the water level is looking in your pot.

Keep It Cool

While you might be snuggling up in your blankets by the fire, your Christmas tree will not appreciate the heat and will quickly dry out if it’s too hot, or too close to your fire or a radiator.

Caring For A Fake Tree

Unlike what many people are lead to believe, fake trees aren’t actually any better for the environment than cutting down a real tree. It’s likely your tree will be put in landfill somewhere when you get rid of it and will last much longer than you do! However, apparently if you keep it longer than 10 years, this will counteract the environmental impact your tree has, especially if you aren’t cutting down real trees as well.

So if going for a fake tree is to help the environment, you won’t be helping much so take this into consideration when you decide what you are going to do this year.

Most fake Christmas trees and decorations these days do like very real, however they can often require more attention than a real tree to keep them looking this way…

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Keep It Clean

Once you have assembled your tree, give your tree a quick dust by using the low setting on your hoover to remove any dust and debris from last year. This will help your tree look it’s best when you have it decorated.

Take Your Time Putting It Up

Putting up a fake tree can be fiddly and time consuming but putting in the time while you put it up will pay off later and make your tree look amazing!

Take your time fluffing out each and every branch to make it look as bushy as possible. This will help your tree look more like a real tree.

Sustainable Christmas Tree Options

With a lot more people trying to be eco-friendly this year, more of us are looking for sustainable ways to enjoy the festive period. From making your own handmade Christmas decorations. To re-useable gift bags instead of wrapping paper and even reducing Christmas waste in general.

Buy A Potted Tree

Incase you’re looking for more sustainable Christmas ideas, how about swapping out your cut down tree for an alive potted tree you can use again and again, year after year. It’s likely a potted tree will be more expensive than your usual tree but try to see it as an investment you can use again next year.

Rent A Tree

You could even rent a potted tree to make it an even more sustainable Christmas. OK, so the tree wouldn’t actually be yours to keep. However the upside is that most of these places will drop off and pick up your tree for you. Meaning all you need to do is look after it while borrowing it.

Use What You Have

If you’re on a bit of a budget this Christmas, you could even use one of the plants you already have instead of a proper Christmas tree. It’s probably the most sustainable Christmas tree you could opt for. No waste as it’s something you already have. You don’t need to spend any money and you’re saving the planet by not driving out to collect one.