Even the pickiest of Christmas tree connoisseurs will eventually find one that makes the cut. This year, you might have to a look a little longer or compromise on size: there’s a tree shortage, according to the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association.
"Trees coming out of the Northwest are probably going to be in shorter supply than they have been for quite some time," president Casey Grogan told our sister-station KARE-TV in Minneapolis. “We are expecting higher prices this year.”
Christmas tree sellers in Colorado are feeling the impact, too. It’s all because of the Great Recession of 2008. Growers in Oregon planted fewer trees that year to save money. Christmas trees can take up to ten years to grow to the size people want to buy. As a result, tree sellers like Columbine Christmas Trees in Glendale didn’t have their usual pick of Oregon-grown trees like the Nordmann fir.
“The only available to us this year were smaller trees up to six, seven foot,” said owner Roger Simmermon. “We got zero in that eight-foot and above range.”
Simmermon has been selling trees for 39 years. He said this is the first he’s ever experienced a shortage. That’s led to higher prices across the board.
“The larger trees, really – they’ve gone up a considerable amount,” Simmermon said. "You know as much as 25 percent.”
Simmermon said he also had to raise prices on smaller trees by about ten percent. He said business has been solid the past couple years, but he acknowledged it’s a declining market.
“The artificial tree takes its bite out of it and then traditions change with different generations,” he said.
On the bright side, tree sellers like Simmermon are taking advantage of an early Thanksgiving. They’ve got an extra week to sell the trees they have in stock.
“This is our third day that we’ve been open and so far so good,” Simmermon said.