Featured plant:
Live Christmas Trees

Long after your used holiday wrapping paper and empty gift boxes make their way to the landfill, your Christmas tree can provide oxygen for the environment, a home for birds and a beautiful focal point for your yard.

Many environmentally conscious people are choosing live trees to decorate this year, and will plant them shortly after the holidays to enjoy for many years to come.

Lavalette Nursery recommends the Norway Spruce, perhaps the most popular choice for a live Christmas tree. These trees are available in various heights and all have healthy roots bound in strong burlap.

Norway Spruce prefers moist but well-drained, acidic soils that may be organic, sandy or loamy. However, it is perhaps the most adaptable common evergreen tree to harsh conditions, including poor, clay, rocky, dry soils of acidic, neutral, or alkaline pH. It thrives under seasonal drought once it is established, and takes well to city pollution. Its only requirement is to not be sited in wet soils. It grows in full sun to partial sun in zones 3 to 7.

Lavalette also has a good supply of beautiful live White Pine trees. The White Pine has branches with long, feathery, soft needles. Though it is a beautiful tree, branches can be a bit too flexible to support heavier decorations, but its lush fullness is beautiful wrapped in colorful garlands or ribbons. Both types of live trees are 4 to 5 feet tall, with the root ball adding another foot in height.

If you prefer a fresh-cut Christmas tree, Lavalette offers high-quality Fraser Fir trees, the most popular of all Christmas trees. These beauties are noted for their 3/4-inch needles with a green top side and silver bottom. A Fraser Fir tree can stay inside your house for quite a while without letting go of its needles, and the fragrance will infuse your house with Christmas spirit.

Even heavy ornaments can be hung from its strong boughs. And it’s easy to decorate because the needles are not prickly. These trees can be flocked for a "snowy look." Most are 7 to 8 feet tall, with some up to 9 feet tall.

Most Christmas trees these days are grown on commercial tree farms. It takes 7 to 10 years for a tree to “grow up” to be a Christmas tree. While growing, the trees provide a wildlife habitat and control soil erosion. Plus, each acre of real Christmas trees consumes carbon dioxide while providing the annual oxygen requirements for 18 people.
Real Christmas trees are 100 percent biodegradable. After the holidays, many communities collect the trees and make them into landscaping mulch or put them into lakes to provide “hiding places” for fish.

You’ll also find plenty of wreaths and garlands available in different
sizes to enhance your holiday decorating at Lavalette Nursery. Wreaths are available ready made or made to order. Bows can be made from a variety of ribbons in stock. The garden center also has a large selection of Christmas decorations for indoors or out.

Lavalette offers local delivery and set-up on all trees. Fresh-cut trees come with E-Z up drill stands which can be re-used every year. Or bring in your own tree stand, select a tree and it will be mounted, delivered and set up in your home.

The garden center is located at 1601 5th St. -- at the top of 5th Street Hill -- and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call (304) 523-8491.