Growing Holiday Traditions with a Living Christmas Tree

Living Christmas tree installed and decorated for a Mercer Island Ecoyards client

A Living Christmas Tree Tradition

For the past few years, we’ve been coaxing a little slip of a fir tree to grow in a pot in our backyard. We dug up the seedling when it was only about a foot long. It was essentially a weed, which had volunteered in the landscape amid annuals and perennials.

We took the seedling and potted it, and over time it has grown several feet in height. In December, we take it indoors to serve as our living Christmas tree. We keep it watered while in the house. When Christmas is over, we move the potted tree back out on our deck.

The tree isn’t much really, and could rival Charlie Brown’s; it holds about two strings of LED Christmas lights and only a few ornaments. It’s not the ideal 6-foot Noble fir tree that I sometimes secretly covet, but over the years, we’ve come to enjoy the tradition of having a living Christmas tree. We like watching it grow from year to year. It saves us a trip to the Christmas tree lot and we don’t have anything to set out curbside when the holiday season is over.

More and more people are opting for living spruces and firs, and then planting the trees on their property afterward.