Aberdeen's Christmas tree harvest begins

The Christmas Tree Harvest for B&Q at Tillygrieg in Aberdeenshire. Picture: Simon Price/PA Wire

Tree-Day involves a team of 60 specialist growers cutting down the trees across 480 acres of Aberdeenshire farmland.

The harvest starts now and continues through until mid-December. Work peaks as the nation starts to reach for the tinsel, and on the busiest harvesting days a whopping 20,000 trees are cut and netted daily.

Christmas trees are grown like other agricultural crops and new trees are planted to replace those that have been cut, enabling the long growing cycle of six to ten years to continue.

Each year the number of trees planted by B&Q’s main supplier in Aberdeenshire is greater than the number harvested to ensure that the approach to sourcing real Christmas trees is responsible and forest-friendly.

Thomas Lunden from the Green Team, B&Q’s main Christmas tree supplier, said: “There is a real art to the timing of the Christmas tree harvest. We’ve been tending to many of these trees for up to a decade, so there is a lot of pressure to make sure the final piece falls into place perfectly with the harvest.

Grower Thomas Lunden checks over his yield of trees as workers carry more harvested trees during the Christmas Tree Harvest for B&Q at Tillygrieg in Aberdeenshire. Picture: Simon Price/PA Wire

“It takes and awful lot of man power and some serious dedication to get the job done, but it’s so satisfying to see the trees that we planted so long ago become the stars of this year’s Christmas.”

To find out more about B&Q’s range of Christmas trees, real and artificial, and decorations log onto www.diy.com.