Recent heavy rains in southern B.C. have created a ripple that has left Metro Vancouver Christmas tree vendors with substantial shortfalls.
The tree shortage — while largely due to heavy rains in southern B.C. that knocked out major highways and flooded entire communities last month — stems from events months before, some tree farmers claim. Many Christmas tree growers reported needle scorching and seedling die-offs during the summer’s record heat waves and drought.
Even still, Metro Vancouver Christmas tree vendors like Hunters Garden Centre depended on the agricultural powerhouse of Abbotsford for their locally grown stock.
A logistical limbo
Laura Doheny is the store manager at Hunters Garden’s West Broadway location, which usually sells 500 trees each year. She said the Christmas tree industry as a whole is in somewhat of a “logistics limbo.”
"We've got a lot of trees that are being held up, a lot of trees that are arriving a lot later than we originally ordered,” Doheny said. “Some we can't even get out because they're still under flood watch."
Doheny explained in an interview with Vancouver Is Awesome on Dec. 1 that only days before many of her trees remained stranded in Cranbrook. The trees arrived the morning of Nov. 30 - two weeks after they were supposed to.
"I can't even give our customers an ETA,” Doheny said. “We'd all like to say, ‘absolutely, the sun's gonna come out and everything will dry up in a week and we will have lots of trees in the next little bit’ but we honestly don't know."
Making do with what's in stock
Despite the challenges, Doheny said she and her team are still making Vancouverites’ Christmas traditions possible, even if a little modified.
“We may not have your number one choice, but we've got another tree that's just as beautiful and so we've had a lot of customers that have certainly gone away very happy with a nice tree,” Doheny said.
Doheny added the most popular size of trees, the six to eight-foot-tall Douglas of Noble firs, are either not available or are in short supply. Doheny says she suggests customers buy the similar-looking Fraser or Grand firs instead.
As for any advice for those who haven’t bought their tree yet, Doheny said they’d better hurry up.
“If you try to wait until mid-December I can't tell you at this point in time what the choices would be for you," Doheny said.
U.S. trees supplementing local stocks
It isn’t so much of a challenge for those sourcing trees outside of B.C. though. Aunt Leah’s Place, a non-profit devoted to helping kids in foster care and young mothers, has been selling Christmas trees across Metro Vancouver for the last 25 years.
“One of our shipments was delayed by a week. We had trees coming from Cranbrook but we received all of those on Monday,” said Craig Lenske, the social enterprise manager at Aunt Leah’s. “The rest of our trees come from a supplier based in Richmond but most of those trees come from Washington and Oregon.”
One of the more notable changes Lenske observed in the market this year is how the Swedish furniture giant IKEA cancelled its annual Christmas tree sale.
For now, at least, Lenske said the Aunt Leah’s tree lots will hold steady.
"We've seen very brisk sales,” Lenske said. "I think we're a little ahead of where we were at the same time last year. This weekend will be interesting, I think this will be the busiest weekend for us."
