A ‘Greener’ Christmas at Squire’s
Squire’s Garden Centres are helping customers enjoy a ‘greener’ Christmas this year, supplying only-UK grown fresh cut Christmas trees as well as locally grown traditional Poinsettias – so fresh they are usually in centres within an hour of leaving the nursery!
Throughout the year Squire’s Plant Expert, Jeremy Hall, works hard to ensure that come the peak festive season, Squire’s is able to offer customers trees and plants that have the ‘greenest’ credentials, helping reduce the carbon footprint of Christmas.
Squire’s sells the freshest Nordmann Christmas trees sourced from Scotland, selected for their dark, lush, glossy needles. Jeremy comments: “We select the best fresh Christmas trees for our customers, and each year they make their way down from farms in Scotland and are eagerly awaited by our garden centre teams. In our centres, once customers have selected their fresh tree, it is packed in home compostable netting, further reducing the impact on the environment.
“For many customers, selecting their Christmas tree from our centres is an annual pilgrimage they make year after year and often with their family. We know our customers are keen to do their bit for the environment and so ensuring our fresh trees are sourced and delivered as sustainably as possible is really important to us.
“Customers can be reassured that Christmas trees are a sustainable crop. Growing for up to 10 years, they produce plenty of oxygen into the environment with each field absorbing 70 tonnes of carbon per hectare. Once the trees are cut, this enables new saplings to be planted for future years and the cycle begins again.”
Fresh Christmas trees will be available in Squire’s Garden Centres from 20th November onwards with a great selection to choose from including Deluxe and Premium Nordmann as well as the increasingly popular Slimline Nordmann, perfect for corners of the home limited on space. Squire’s teams offer a convenient carry-to-car service as well as home delivery options, making selecting that special festive tree and getting it home as simple as possible and each tree comes with a Squire’s Real Christmas Tree Guarantee* too.
Nothing says Christmas has arrived liked the sight of a striking Poinsettia, available now at Squire’s Garden Centres. Synonymous with the season, with iconic shaped leaves, Squire’s Poinsettias are available in a wide range of colours; as well as traditional red, other eye-catching colours available this year include ‘Surprise Orange’, ‘Pink Champagne’, ‘Lemon Christmas’ and ‘Golden Glow’. What’s more, the Poinsettias are the absolute freshest they can be. Grown locally, they can be in some Squire’s centres within a matter of minutes. The poinsettias are grown in Surrey at Hersham-based Woodlark Nurseries and in Sussex at Squire’s own Barnsfold nurseries, enabling the plants to arrive in-store with minimal plant miles undertaken.
Squire’s Plant Expert, Jeremy, continues: “Our Poinsettia’s are another great example of a really ‘green’ plant – grown locally, they don’t have to travel far at all to reach our centres. As a plant that needs careful nurturing – they are light sensitive and don’t like draughts – they are kept warm by our growers with the assistance of bio-mass boiler in the growing season, which burns wood chips, rather than oil or gas. We are extremely proud of our Poinsettias for being the very best quality and grown with a good environmental ethos too.“
The Poinsettias arrive in centres carefully wrapped in recyclable sleeves to guard against the cold and any draughts. Jeremy advises taking the plants straight home to be nurtured in a warm environment.
Squire’s also has a range of pot-grown Christmas trees which provide customers with the option to have a tree they can enjoy over a number of years, as the tree can be placed outside after the festive season and cared for until next year. Jeremy adds: “For some customers, it is appealing to buy one tree and enjoy it over a number of years without the need to buy a new one each year and this too, of course, limits the impact on the environment in a different way.”
Images: Squire’s Garden Centres getting ready for a ‘greener’ (top of page) Jeremy Hall, Squire’s Plant Expert, with Surrey-grown Poinsettias and (above) fresh trees from Scotland.
