Re-using your Christmas tree in the garden

BBC Gardeners' World Magazine

Published: Friday, 16 December 2022 at 9:58 am

Kate Bradbury shares ways to recycle your Christmas tree, including how to make a cosy bug hotel

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Every year we use around eight million Christmas trees in the UK. Many of these end up being shredded and used as woodchip, used as sea defences or even fed to goats! But still an estimated 160,000 tonnes of Christmas trees end up in landfill, where each tree releases methane and CO2 back into the atmosphere. But it doesn’t have to be this way - there are many ways you can give your tree a second life.

Christmas trees can be extremely useful in the garden. If you have your own shredder, you can shred the branches and leaves and use the material in your compost heap or as a mulch – particularly around acid-loving plants such as blueberries. Then chop up the trunk and add it to a log pile.

You can also use the tree as a support for climbing plants, perhaps for beans on your allotment, or use the branches to insulate young plants and protect them from slugs and snails.

In this video, Kate Bradbury suggests ways to re-use your real tree and makes a stylish bug hotel: