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Urban Gardener

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Urban Gardener

Professional gardener offering a very individual service. I work with clients to teach about and adv My artist's website is www.renatedebrun.com

Specialising in working with clients on their gardens, providing both expertise and physical help and, if desired, the simultaneous teaching of gardening knowledge and techniques. This is a very individual service and can include:

- Advice, design and planning. Speciality: small spaces, containers, courtyards, seaside gardening.
- Stocktaking, triage and mapping of plants.
- Sensitive and plan

t-specific pruning.
- Sourcing plants and materials.
- Managing/overseeing larger projects and hard landscaping.
- Written proposals for committees/management companies.
- Reliable (free) back-up for regular clients with information and advice by email/phone.
- greater Dublin area only, with possible exceptions for larger projects. I am a plantswoman and professional gardener of 20 years’ experience. Born and raised on a farm in rural Bavaria – where my mother was a keen gardener – I have been based in Dublin since 1989. My main interest is in plants - their varieties, uses, requirements, habits and quirks. In years of observation and experience I have accumulated a wide and varied body of knowledge in this area, which benefits my work and my customers. My professional life has been multi-facetted: I originally studied languages, with a masters degree in literature and linguistics, and speak English, German, French, Spanish and Greek. After some years working in teaching and interpreting, in the mid-1990s I changed career to become an artist and – in a return to my rural roots – a professional gardener. A life-long diarist, I have always been interested in language and writing and is currently collaborating on two scripts for Tv and a libretto for opera. I am a founder member of the artists collective Marlborough Studios in Dublin’s north inner city and a member of Graphic Studio Dublin. I work in drawing, mixed media and printmaking, and I exhibit my work regularly.

23/04/2023

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The next best time is now. (proverb)

My father in his old age planted oak and beech trees. He was a simple man, of peasant background, his education cut short by poverty and war. Yet, uncommon for most farmers of that time and place he had a love of wild things, and an intuitive understanding of the importance of biodiversity before that word was invented. So wherever a bit of the commercial pine monoculture he had inherited was felled, and on some fields at the edge of forest, he planted mixed woodland. He knew he would be dead before those trees reached maturity and that even his children would not see them fully grown, but they were not for him, nor for us.

This was cathedral thinking, and we need more of it in our approach to nature in order to confront climate change, loss of biodiversity and mass extinction. The polar opposite of a short-term, egocentric approach, cathedral thinking takes a long view and dares to have faith in a future where one’s work may be carried on by others, just as the craftsmen of the great cathedrals knew that they would never see the finished building, nor could be sure that it would ever be completed, but kept building nonetheless.

We should have started a long time ago, planted that proverbial tree twenty, fifty years ago, moved away from deforestation, pesticides, industrial farming. But that is no reason to give up hope and not do it now. Some of the environmental damage and loss of natural habitat we have today are happening because twenty or fifty years ago people thought it was already too late. And so it continues, in a fatalistic downward spiral of unstoppable doom.

When it comes to re-wilding and re-establishing biodiversity, we need cathedral thinking. The forester and writer Peter Wohlleben (‘The secret life of trees’) advocates a radical approach: leave nature alone wherever possible, even if this means that things may get worse for a time before they get better. Don’t plant trees but let saplings grow naturally from seed, for those have a stronger root-system, will be more attuned with each other and better equipped for their changing environment. This is of course a much slower, more unpredictable process than an interventionist, managed program of replanting, even one based on the best of today’s knowledge. It is a leap of faith in the regenerative, self-regulating forces of nature.

The Bavarian Forest national park is part of the largest natural forest region in central Europe. Following a devastating storm in 1983, it was decided to leave it completely without human interference so that it would revert to a primeval forest for future generations. When a severe spruce bark beetle infestation decimated its mature trees in the 1990s there were local protests against this policy and even a court case against the Bavarian state. The court decided in favour of non-interference, and the forest died. Now, 30 years on, it has regenerated from seedlings, with a more varied, natural mix of trees, better able to withstand parasites and climate change. Biodiversity has increased manifold in the same period. Ecological benefits aside, the forest now generates many times more revenue and employment through ecotourism and education programmes than it ever did when still commercially used.

That same bark beetle has now reached the UK and is a serious potential threat to commercial spruce monocultures in Ireland. I see that official advice to forestry owners is to be vigilant and spray insecticide at the first sign of infestation, but this will be a losing battle. It’s time to ditch the monocultures and the poison.

And at home, on our little patch of garden? We can leave things alone more. Where possible, clean up less, maybe fight ‘pests’ less, in the hope and knowledge that somewhere down the line it will all balance out. Not seed wildflower meadows, but if there is space, leave one area of grass alone. The native wildflowers will come, and yes, many are what we have been conditioned to think of as w**ds. There is no difference. Instead of putting up nesting boxes, allow patches of dense, wild shrubbery, and dead wood that is a habitat for insects. The birds will come and build their own nests. Difficult as it is, we need to change our thinking, and our sense of aesthetics around gardening, interfere less and check our urge to improve and design the natural environment the way we would our living rooms.

I go and look at my father’s trees occasionally, and they are still growing. I will not live to see them at their full mature height, and they may never reach it. With climate change reducing precipitation, those old native trees may largely die out anyway. But in their shelter I can see saplings of other, self-seeded trees – robinia, field maple, some forms of ash – which can withstand drought better. Maybe his grandchildren will have inherited a bit of my father’s cathedral thinking and leave them alone to mature. Not for themselves, of course, but for the future.

“There is hope, endless hope, but not for us.”
(Kafka, probably)

P Wohlleben's book is well worth reading: https://www.dubraybooks.ie/product/hidden-life-of-trees-pb-9780008218430
and if in Bavaria or the Czech Republic, this place is worth visiting:
https://www.nationalpark-bayerischer-wald.bayern.de/english/nature/index.htm

24/10/2021

The leaves are falling, falling as from afar
As if distant gardens in the skies were dying (Rilke)

Every autumn they fall, those leaves, and pile up on the ground, reminding us of the coming descent into the darkness and cold of winter. And every year those diabolical leaf-blowers rev up to get them out of sight, as if wanting to hold back this tide of death, decay and disorder.

Is it some subconscious denial of mortality that makes people hunt down and bag every bit of leaf debris? No, apparently it’s to keep clean those damn lawns and tidy gardens, symbols of our human lust for forcing order and shape onto the natural world. The need of our agrarian forbears to fight back the wilderness for a plot of cultivated land on which to grow food seems to have translated into a modern inability to handle nature’s irrepressible urge to be untidy and diverse.

Why do leaves have to fall in the first place? It is an adaptation of trees and shrubs to climates with cold winters, where they have evolved to survive hostile conditions by conserving energy and shedding all that is vulnerable and replaceable. A temporary letting go of beauty and delicate, lush greenery in order to preserve life and regenerate. Evergreens shed leaves too, but it is a slower, more continuous form of replacement and thus less obvious.

But all this death and decay is not a loss: what the tree sheds from the top it gains below; the life lost from the crown enriches the soil and feeds roots and growth underneath. Dead leaves are precious organic matter, fertile soil in the making, full of microorganisms that break fibre down into humus and make nutrients available again to new plant life.

They also harbour insects, many of which need the shelter and nutrition provided by leaf debris to overwinter. Birds in turn depend on these as a source of food. Leaf blowers with their violent jets of air are particularly detrimental to this insect population, which is a reason some countries are considering banning them. Personally, I’d ban them for their infernal noise alone, never mind for being symbols of human thoughtlessness. A garden blown clean of dead leaves is a garden swept clear of many small but essential life forms.

Understandably, paths, roads and infrastructure have to be kept clear of leaves so they don’t trip up people or delay trains. In the garden, accumulations of leaves will starve the areas underneath of light and air, killing off grass and seedlings. Left alone, our gardens and fields would return to woodland in a generation or two. Flower beds contain many perennials that are native to open plains and dry grasslands and those do not take well to being buried under piles of leaves. Other plants, particularly those native to woodlands, will benefit from the protection of a warm blanket of organic matter. Generally, if the plant keeps green leaves at the base through winter it’s probably a sign it doesn’t like those to be suffocated; if it dies down to below ground, chances are it will like a leaf mulch.

So what to do with leaves in the garden? Rake any major accumulations off the lawn and flower beds, without being overly tidy. Either make leaf mulch by composting them, or simply spread the leaves directly under shrubs and trees. They are perfectly capable of rotting without any help. There are some large fibrous leaves that take forever to break down (such as phormiums, cordylines or evergreen prunus) and can go into green waste – unless you have areas under trees where they can remain and take their time decaying. A thin layer of debris on herbaceous beds does no harm.

Try, if at all possible, to keep the bulk of your leaves somewhere in your garden. For the sake of life, of micro-organisms, insects and birds. And a little reminder of mortality won’t do any harm either.

25/07/2021

On occasional sleepless nights I am haunted by plants I have foisted on clients, particularly during my early, less experienced years. There’s the Russian vine I planted beside a small artisan cottage for a woman who wanted a fast climber. The Mexican daisy which has probably overrun half a suburban neighbourhood by now. The solanum that is likely pushing shoots into someone's attic. And there are a few romneyas.

Romneya coulterii, named in honour of the Irish botanist Thomas Coulter, is a beautiful plant. Its huge flowers of crinkly, pure white petals around a bright yellow centre rise against a perfect foil of greyish-green, deeply cut leaves. A native of the US south-west coast – it’s also known as Californian tree poppy – it loves sunny spots and dry, light soils, where it will grow vigorously to two metres tall. You (or a hard frost) may cut it to the ground and new growth will bounce back in a few months.

It is also indomitable and unruly, with a limitless energy for spreading by root. Years ago I planted one against a wall where it thrived until my clients removed it in order to lay a patio. They did not count on the sheer resilience of their romneya, which still pushes up shoots through any cracks in the paving and even the wall, from some secret reservoir of eternal life it maintains deep under ground.

Some plants will simply not give up. Tenaciousness and an almost uncanny power of regeneration are features of quite a number of garden plants: I have seen cordylines die in a hard winter only to reappear from the rootstock several years later; my sister fought a full five years against a seemingly unkillable Russian vine, and I don’t think I have ever dug up a well-established eryngium, oriental poppy, acanthus or Japanese anemone without their reappearing in the original spot for years after. The ability to regenerate from a deep root system or tiny root fragments practically guarantees eternal life.

Other plants are such prolific self-seeders that seedlings will appear season after season. Echium, campanula poscharskiana, fleabane (Mexican daisy - erigeron karviskianus), viola labradorica – to name but a few – will deposit millions of seeds into the soil and other nooks and crannies where they will come up like a carpet the next spring. Sometimes they may lie dormant for ages until triggered into germination by some soil disturbance, some condition of light, water or climate, or by a mysterious inner clockwork that tells them time is right to be born.

Then there are the fast growers. I have foisted a few of these on myself against my better judgement. In need of a quick-fix screen for an eyesore I have resorted to planting solanum crispum – which now I have to prune three times a year to keep it from swallowing up half a garden. A few rashly planted eucalyptus trees I have had to watch like a hawk and prune annually ever since, plus a few more I fret over when I don’t hear from their respective owners for more than a year. Because once those get away on you, you’re done for.

This piece was prompted by one of my older clients recently falling in love with a romneya she has seen in the garden centre. I love this plant, she says, can we please find some space for it? No, I say, forget it, it’s too invasive. It will be all over the place in a few years, and I may no longer be around to deal with it – a favourite threat I deploy these days. We look at each other. Neither may I, she says, so who cares. We decide to put it into a corner where it can run rampant for a while. Future owners of her garden may well curse us, and that romneya will probably outlast them, too.

The photo is of a romneya coulterii I planted a few years ago. Courtesy of Bartosz Ogarek, who now has to keep it in bounds.

04/07/2021

In German Romanticism the Blue Flower (blaue Blume) was a symbol for the ideal, the longed-for but unattainable. Long before science unlocked genetic codes of living things these people seemed to know something: true blue is indeed the rarest colour in flowers, and in nature as a whole.

The wildflower meadow in front of Dublin’s Trinity College illustrates this point. When its sods were laid last year there was the brilliant blue sparkle of cornflower in it; this year, the whites, pinks and yellows of yarrow, marguerites, campion, thistles and buttercup dominate. Biennial borage adds an occasional dot of blue but this will probably have met the same fate as the cornflower by next year. Both need open sites with dry, poor soils where not much competition can grow. They persist on roadsides and in ploughed fields among newly seeded grain but won’t survive in dense meadow vegetation.

Blue is in fact the rarest colour in nature. Only ten percent of the world’s flowers are blue and plants do not even possess a blue pigment. Their most common colour pigments are anthocyanins, which produce red, orange and yellow hues. Plants can, however, produce the colour we see as blue by modifying those anthocyanin pigments via complex processes involving shifts in pH (acidity) as well as the mixing of pigments, ions and molecules.

Which brings us to the famous business of hydrangeas turning blue when grown on acid soil. Gardeners have been adding anything from coffee grounds to rusty nails to their flower beds to increase acidity, with varying degrees of success. If you do covet blue hydrangeas and have alkaline soil the easiest way is to keep applying a commercially available soil acidifier.

Flower colour in the same plant can differ according to temperature; it can also become bleached by UV light, or simply fade with age. Purely anecdotally, I have noticed that normally pale yellow or white flowers may produce pink shades in cold weather.

Why do plants produce such colourful flowers in the first place? The main aim of all this beauty is, as always, procreation. Bees and other insects are attracted by vivid hues to visit and pollinate flowers, leading to cross-fertilisation and viable seeds. Many insects have a colour perception far superior to that of humans and live in a truly technicolour world. Other animals for whose survival colour vision is less important – such as cattle – see only a limited range or are completely colour blind.

Many common garden plants from roses and dahlias to lilies and snapdragons still lack true blue cultivars despite the best efforts of breeders who over the years have tried, without great success, to create them by selecting and crossing the bluest of the purples and mauves. More recently genetic modification has been used to achieve the prized blue rose. In most cases, the blue flower remains the elusive ideal that it symbolised for the German romantics.

-- More detail on plant colour: https://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/articles/colorwhy.html
-- A fun site on how animals see colour: https://www.colormatters.com/color-matters-for-kids/how-animals-see-color
– On the preciousness of blue pigment: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/meet-blue-crew-scientists-trying-give-food-flowers-and-more-color-rarely-found-nature #:~:text=Plants%20have%20evolved%20many%20classes,of%20producing%20blue%3A%20the%20anthocyanins.

16/05/2021

On woodland floors and in shady garden corners a little plant creeps around which goes by the most grandiose names: Waldmeister (master of the forest) in German, and Queen of the Woods (reine des bois) in French. This is sweet woodruff, or galium odoratum.

Currently it is in bloom, its delicate star-shaped flowers of pure white studding the fresh green carpet of soft low stems and tiered whorls of narrow leaves. A native plant loving shade and moisture, it spreads both by root and clingy seeds and quickly covers areas under trees and shrubs. In the garden it makes a good evergreen, unobtrusive if rather invasive ground cover for shady areas.

It is its scent which earns it those grand names: sweet, grassy, with notes of vanilla, becoming strong only as the herb dries. The Germans are particularly fond of it, flavouring sweets, ice-cream, jellies and liqueurs with it. Berliner Weisse is a beer that despite the ‘white’ in its name comes only in raspberry red and green, the latter via the addition of woodruff syrup. Then there is the famous Maibowle (May punch), a lime green concoction of wine, champagne and herbs, the main one of these being Waldmeister.

When I was a child you could be fairly sure that any green coloured sweet was of woodruff flavour. Nobody liked it much but we ate the sweets regardless, sugar trumping any other taste. A particularly revolting confection typically flavoured with the herb was a lurid green jelly called 'food of the gods' (Götterspeise) to add insult to injury. I believe it exists to this day.

‘Lady’s Bedstraw’ is one of the common names for the plant in English, referring to the fact that in the old days it was one of the herbs added to the straw used to stuff mattresses and pillows, for its pleasant scent and possibly also to keep moths and other insects away.

Like almost all aromatic herbs, woodruff has also been used medicinally in the past. Its mildly antispasmodic and anti-inflammatory properties have been used in folk medicine against all manner of ills including, naturally, witchcraft and the evil eye.

Cumarin, the natural compound that gives the herb its flavour and fragrance, is also mildly toxic, which led to natural woodruff being banned as an additive to many food products, particularly those eaten by children. It is now usually replaced by an artificial substitute, or else strict limits apply to its commercial culinary use.

In their homes, though, Germans still brew Maibowle with the real stuff gathered from the woods. Its main toxic effect appears to be a headache, making it a handy culprit. Someone must have put too much Waldmeister into that punch...

21/03/2021

For a few weeks each spring the hay meadows of my childhood turned golden with dandelion flowers, then silver with their seed heads. In a breeze, clouds of parachutes, each with a little seed attached, would rise from them, pioneers in search of a spot of bare soil or a crack in a pavement. ‘Kuhblume’ (cowflower) we called them and picked them in masses. The flowers close quickly in a vase but still produce their fluffy seed heads when cut, following the reproductive imperative even as they die.

The cut stems that ooze a white sap will twist into tight spirals and curls when split carefully and put into water. This game we played for hours, fashioning what we imagined to be elaborate hairpieces of locks and ringlets. If you have dandelions and small children on your hands, there’s one way of keeping the latter entertained for an afternoon.

Farming folk did not despise dandelions the way suburban gardeners and modern farmers now do. They are a sign of good, deep soil, and their sappy leaves a favourite food for cows, goats and geese alike. Townspeople foraged them from hedgerows and roadsides to feed their rabbits or guinea pigs, or themselves. My mother made a spring salad from the young leaves to ‘cleanse the blood’, something always of concern to peasant folk. They are indeed nutritious stuff, full of vitamins and trace elements. Their delicious, slightly bitter flavour also led to the dried roasted roots being used as a coffee substitute.

Originating in Asia Minor, the dandelion has been known and loved since antiquity. So valued was the plant in past times that people would w**d out the grass to give it space. It has a myriad folk names in different languages, many of them descriptive of medicinal uses. ‘Dandelion’ comes from French ‘dent de lion’ (lion’s tooth), describing the deeply toothed leaves. Taraxacum officinale, their botanical name, originates in medieval Persian writings on pharmacology.

‘Pissabed’, or ‘pissenlit’ in French, is one of the common names, referring to the diuretic effect of taking dandelion root. Chinese medicine makes use of its various medicinal properties, while in medieval Europe dandelion potions were prescribed for anything from rotting gums and depression to the plague. Its modern – and also homeopathic – use is mainly as a tonic for the liver and the stomach.

In 1620 the pilgrims on the Mayflower brought the plant to the Americas, one of the few places it did not reach by its own little parachutes. For it is one of the great pioneer plants, able to travel and take root almost anywhere. It will grow on a roof, push through tarmac or settle on gravel. Its long-lived taproot can reach almost 7’/2m deep, making the plant impervious to drought. To the chagrin of tidy gardeners each small bit of this root can regenerate into a new plant, even rising again, Lazarus-like, after drying out and looking perfectly dead.

A relentless war has been waged on dandelions in recent decades by gardeners and modern farmers. Make no mistake, dandelions will win for they are the ultimate survivors, and we will lose because of the immense collateral damage wreaked by herbicides on human health, the environment and other plant and animal species. Dandelions, on the other hand, are of huge benefit to biodiversity as their early and abundant flowers are a critically important food source for many insects including bees.

It can be difficult for gardeners – myself included – to push back against a lifetime of conditioning that equates dandelion with ‘w**d’ and ‘out!’ but we will have to try. Time has come to reappraise this little flower we take so much for granted, for its beauty alone but also for its usefulness, and to allow it its space in our fields and gardens.

17/01/2021

"The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone”
(Gerald Manley Hopkins)

Irish winters have their share of darkness, rain and storms but they are mild and benign affairs when compared to those of more continental climates. This is due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream and explains why Ireland has such a wide range of plant species. Many natives from milder climes – the Mediterranean, California, Australia/New Zealand and eastern South America – now form part of the island’s flora, both in gardens and in the wild.

Every ten-odd years, however, we get a winter that is cold enough to show which plants are truly hardy by killing off the tender specimens planted by recklessly optimistic gardeners. It usually takes a few days of below-zero temperatures for this to happen; less commonly, one night of unusually hard frost will suffice to cause a massacre.

Individual plant species usually are as cold-tolerant as their native climate would require so that hardiness can usually be deduced from provenance. Plants from tropical and subtropical zones – many houseplants come into this category – start feeling uncomfortable at temperatures below 10°-15°, while those from harsher northern regions such as maples, birch and many conifers can withstand months of frozen ground and temperatures far below zero.

The strategies plants have evolved to withstand frost are manifold, but their single most important aim is to prevent at all cost the freezing of water inside cells. Ice crystals will pierce or burst cell walls and the whole thing will end up as mush – as anyone who has ever put fresh fruit or leafy vegetables into the freezer has found out to their cost.

Soft and sappy green growth is generally most susceptible to frost as it holds a lot of water. Deciduous plants limit the damage by shedding their leaves or allowing them to die back, leaving only the less vulnerable woody structures. At the same time the leaf litter on the ground creates insulation for the roots. Bark and hairy leaves can also serve as layers of insulation while other plants, such as winter rye or some bulbs, can produce antifreeze proteins to protect their tissues.

Evergreen shrubs and trees have evolved complex strategies of supercooling (see link below), or deliberate desiccation which allows water to freeze in the intercellular spaces but not inside the cells themselves which by the same process dry out slightly. This has its limits, however. If frost is too hard or long-lasting the plant will die – not from the frost itself but from the resulting dehydration.

Annuals are plants that throw in the towel entirely in winter and die. Their seeds, containing oils but little water, survive to emerge as a new generation in the spring. Some seeds even need a period of cold before they germinate; this signals to them that winter has passed and it is now safe to make shoots. Bulb growers use the same technique (ie refrigeration) to force hyacinths to flower at Christmas.

The easiest way to avoid frost damage in the garden is to plant native or other hardy specimens and be aware of microclimates. Even the smallest garden has pockets that are warmer or more protected that others, at a sunny wall maybe, or beside a heated house. Use nature’s own insulation methods and spread mulch, or simply leave dead growth and leaf litter alone.

For the more proactive, a potassium feed in late summer can help plants accumulate those anti-freeze sugars in their tissues. Wrapping in fleece or hessian will protect the more vulnerable specimens even if it does not look pretty. While snow forms an insulation for hardier plants, large accumulations of it can damage more tender ones as well as break trees and shrubs, so do shake it off where appropriate.

Like most metabolisms, plants winter better if they have a little adaptation time, which is why sudden freezes are the most damaging, especially in late winter or early spring when new shoots or flowers have appeared. These are easily killed off, often leading to poor fruit harvests. A sudden thaw can be equally dangerous, causing a flow of water back into frost-shrunken cells and bursting them. This is the reason why plants such as camellias should not be planted where they get the morning sun. It is not the frost that will kill the buds but the thaw – a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Some practical advice: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gar.../basics/weather_coldweather.shtml
On supercooling: https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../earth.../supercooling....
Some more technical info: https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/.../cold-tolerance....

20/12/2020

It appears that is the Germans who are largely to blame for the ubiquitous pagan ritual of dressing up trees in lights and tinsel, something that relates to the birth of a prophet called Jesus in the Middle East about as strongly as plastic reindeer antlers on car roofs, or pop songs about a man called Santa coming to town.

Incorporating old gods and religious rituals into a new faith is probably as old as humanity. In the case of Christmas it was the ancient celebrations of the solstice, symbol of rebirth and a change in the solar tide at the darkest, deadest time of the year, which would have seemed to tie in handily with the birth of a messiah promising resurrection and eternal life. But how did an innocent tree get mixed up in all this?

First accounts of decorated trees around Christmas time appear in the 16th century in some German regions, notably Alsace. Some of this probably goes back to pre-Christian solstice rites of various central European Celtic and Germanic tribes, many of whose religious cults included tree-worship. It was not until the 18th century that the custom of the Christmas tree became more wide-spread in German lands, albeit limited largely to aristocratic circles, fir trees being rare and expensive. Common folk had to make do with branches and other greenery for their seasonal decorations. Only in the 20th century did commercial plantations appear and affordable Christmas trees become widely available to city dwellers.

Outside Germany the Christmas tree was for a long time considered a very German and particularly Lutheran tradition, yet it seemed irresistible. The custom spread to Victorian England with Prince Albert, to North America with German immigrants in the 1830s, and to most of Europe, Russia and the Americas during the second half of the 19th century. St Peter’s Square in Rome held out longest and did not erect its first tree until 1982.

So what kind of conifer are we talking about? ‘Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum’ goes that well-known German Christmas song, identifying the tree in question firmly as a fir (abies, German Tanne). Several varieties of fir, particularly abies nordmanniana, still make up the majority of commercially grown Christmas trees, popular because they have a dense, regular habit and hold their needles for a long time. Norway spruce (picea abies) is considered the ‘original’ traditional Christmas tree, but because of its prickly, fast-shedding needles it is not popular for indoors.

In rural Bavaria where I grew up everybody used Austrian pine (pinus nigra), the most common local conifer. People would just cut one out of their – or occasionally someone else’s – woodland, or use the tops of large trees which had been logged. Naturally grown pine looks nothing like the classic Christmas tree: always a little scrawny, with fewer, larger and more widely spaced branches. This growth habit requires regular pruning when cultivated commercially and is probably the reason why pines are not commonly available as Christmas trees.

Many trees now are neither fir nor spruce but plastic. At a time when the world is drowning in plastic waste it would seem counterintuitive, but in ecological terms an artificial tree that is used for many years may have no worse a carbon footprint than a real one, as long as the real one is locally and sustainably grown and not wrapped in too much plastic. The most environmentally friendly approach would be simply to decorate a living tree in your garden or to keep a potted one on the balcony or in the garden and briefly move it indoors for Christmas. A friend, without much ado, simply decorates her large ficus houseplant every year.

Incidentally, Germans, or at least one immigrant family to California, are responsible for another quintessential Christmas flower. The poinsettia, or Christmas Star, native to Mexico and Central America, was promoted and sold in association with Christmas by one Albert Ecke and his descendants, who developed a secret propagation technique that made the plant commercially viable. This gave the family a virtual monopoly in the US poinsettia market until the 1980s.

Technically the colourful parts of poinsettia are bracts not petals, and no more a flower than a plastic tree is a Tannenbaum or reindeer antlers a symbol for the messiah. But let’s not go there. Just don’t blame the Germans.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/08/are-real-or-fake-christmas-trees-better-for-the-planet
Keeping poinsettias going is possible, but a lot of fuss: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/poinsettia/poinsettia-care-how-do-you-take-care-of-poinsettias.htm
Christmas tree varieties: http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/treevarieties.php

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