Placing used Christmas tree in backyard will ‘spread year-round cheer to wildlife’

The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is suggesting putting your old Christmas tree in your backyard, instead of the curb for garbage pick-up.

The not-for-profit, private land conservation group says leaving it in your backyard over the winter can provide many benefits for backyard wildlife, providing important habitat for bird populations during the winter months, especially on cold nights and during storms.

The first step in letting nature help you recycle your Christmas tree is to put it anywhere in the backyard, says the NCC — prop it up near another tree, against a fence or lay it in your garden. 

“Evergreens offer a safe place for birds to rest while they visit your feeder,” says the NCC's Senior Conservation Biologist Dan Kraus. “Another benefit is that if you leave the tree in your garden over the summer, it will continue to provide habitat for wildlife and improve your soil as it decomposes.”

By spring, the tree will have lost most of its needles. The NCC says you can simply cut the tree branches and lay them where spring flowers are starting to emerge in your garden and place the trunk on soil (but not on top of the flowers, of course).

Kraus says the tree branches and trunk can provide habitat, shelter wildflowers, hold moisture and help build the soil, mimicking what happens with dead trees and branches in a forest. Toads will seek shelter under the log, and insects, including pollinators such as carpenter bees, will burrow into the wood.

“By fall, the branches and trunk will begin to decompose and turn into soil,” says Kraus. “Many of our Christmas trees, particularly spruce and balsam fir, have very low rot resistance and break down quickly when exposed to the elements. The more contact the cut branches and trunk have with the ground, the quicker it will decompose. Drilling holes in the tree trunk will speed up that process.”

Kraus adds, that our backyards are ecosystems of their own and provide an opportunity to learn about forest ecology. By leaving our Christmas tree in our backyard, we can understand its life cycle and observe its impact on backyard biodiversity.

There are other uses for Christmas trees, says the NCC: several municipalities have drop off sites where trees are chipped up and composted or used as trail bedding; some communities place the Christmas trees on shores to help prevent coastal erosion; and some pulp and paper companies collect and burn them for a fuel alternative to oil.