Last Updated on January 2, 2024

Buying Trees Online

Lessons Learned Working on a Christmas Tree Farm

The summer I turned 12 I got a job working on a Christmas tree farm.  Pruning shears in hand, I joined a crew of 6 to help make sure the trees grew full and dense. 

The secret was making sure the evergreen tree had just one leader as opposed to a crown of leaders on top. This slows down the upward growth & puts more energy into the branching.  

The first online nursery I worked at in 2009 put me to work in their field the first week.  They were using the same principles I was taught as a kid on that Christmas tree farm.

They had one area filled with over 300 Nellie Stevens Hollies in 3-gallon containers. They ranged in height from 3 1/2 to just over 5 feet. Being in marketing, I was excited at the opportunity to offer 5-foot-tall holly shrubs.

One afternoon, the Nursery Manager took gas-powered hedge clippers and in less time than it would take me to figure out how to start the darn thing, he had ‘topped off’ all those Nellie Stevens Hollies to a uniform height of 3 feet.

My jaw dropped.  We could have sold taller heights for more money. I saw lost dollar signs in the holly trimmings lying on the landscape cloth (and a mess I just knew he was going to ask me to clean up).  The Nursery Manager chuckled and explained how the trimming or topping off would help ensure the hollies grow fuller with denser foliage than if he allowed them to keep growing upwards.

As a practical matter, he also educated me that the uniform height would make it easier for many processes at the nursery. Offering multiple heights for the same shrub, in the same location is asking field workers to waste time trying to look for heights versus just taking from the outside of the grouping.

And yes, I had to go through the entire Nellie Stevens crop and not just clean up the trimmings, but also pull any weeds that may have started in the containers.  It gave me a new appreciation for the efforts of the field workers.

Putting all the holly shrubs at a uniform height would also save on packing time. The warehouse packers know all Nellie Stevens can fit in one size box.

In other words, it gets your order to you faster.

So, if you see a tree or shrub that has 2, 3, or more similar heights listed for different prices, find out the container size. If they don’t list container sizes, call them! 

If the heights all have the same container sizes, it may not be worth the extra money.  You might be paying for 2 or 3 stems that have a few leaves stretching inches higher.

I have learned over the years that the biggest question we get on pre-purchase phone calls is about the height. That is why some online nurseries will try to cheat the process by pruning off branches to force a tree to grow taller, and faster.  So, that deal you think you are getting on a 5 to 6-foot tree may show up at your door in a small container looking like a whip with few, if any branches.

Just don't buy a tree online that only lists a height. Call them first and find out what size container that tree is in.