Go Green With Earth-friendly Christmas Wreaths
Interested in earth-friendly decorations and Christmas gifts for the coming holiday season? Think noble fir and incense cedar, holly and white pine, Oregon bay and salal, Western red cedar and Leyland cypress and Douglas fir.
Go green and send greens. Evergreen Christmas wreaths and swags, cedar and mixed-greens garland, and holiday centerpieces featuring evergreens make a lot of sense for everyone on your gift list, and for yourself and your home. There are lots of aspects of using fresh, live evergreens for holiday decorating and gift-giving that reflect respect for this fragile planet we live on. Perhaps the first is that they're natural and biodegradable. There's no plastic involved, and thus no using up the finite resources of petroleum to create them and adding to the nondegradable landfill load when they reach the end of their useful life. And no one has to try to find storage space for fresh evergreens at the end of the holiday season.
When the season's over, fresh evergreens can be composted, chipped or otherwise recycled. And because they're all natural, they're nice to be around while they're indoors. We can't say there's no off-gassing, but the natural oils in evergreens mean they smell good (we're talking essential oils here) and you're not inhaling toxic gases. Nice, in fact, is an understatement. The lovely scent of evergreens is soothing and delightful, a clean wholesome smell that complements the spices of holiday baking and the enticing aromas of holiday meals.
The next green aspect of natural greens is that they're renewable resources. No trees are cut down to provide the boughs most companies use for Christmas wreaths and other holiday decorations. Instead, a healthy pruning is the rule: boughs are harvested, but the trees re-grow them for harvest on a rotation basis. Even broadleaf evergreens like salal and bay, used for accents, are harvested in a sustainable rotation.
A responsible evergreens firm will use only noble fir boughs that are certified by its state's department of agriculture as free from Phytophthora ramorum, or Sudden Oak Death, a fungus which affects noble fir and other trees and shrubs all over the country. This certification means that no greens used by the firm will endanger fir, oak or other susceptible species in other places to which they are shipped.
Earth-friendly evergreen firms use local greenery in their Christmas wreaths or Hanukkah wreaths, and in their garlands, swags and centerpieces, not something that's shipped in from halfway across the country. They support local tree-farm operations, which benefit the environment, and buy from harvesters who lease public or private forest land for resources like boughs and cones, thus adding to the local economy. Large-scale, carefully organized shipping operations make the most economic use of fuels for distribution.
Earth-friendly gifts of greens from the forest, and eco-smart evergreen decorations in the home, simply make good sense. And good scents. Enjoy.
Go green and send greens. Evergreen Christmas wreaths and swags, cedar and mixed-greens garland, and holiday centerpieces featuring evergreens make a lot of sense for everyone on your gift list, and for yourself and your home. There are lots of aspects of using fresh, live evergreens for holiday decorating and gift-giving that reflect respect for this fragile planet we live on. Perhaps the first is that they're natural and biodegradable. There's no plastic involved, and thus no using up the finite resources of petroleum to create them and adding to the nondegradable landfill load when they reach the end of their useful life. And no one has to try to find storage space for fresh evergreens at the end of the holiday season.
When the season's over, fresh evergreens can be composted, chipped or otherwise recycled. And because they're all natural, they're nice to be around while they're indoors. We can't say there's no off-gassing, but the natural oils in evergreens mean they smell good (we're talking essential oils here) and you're not inhaling toxic gases. Nice, in fact, is an understatement. The lovely scent of evergreens is soothing and delightful, a clean wholesome smell that complements the spices of holiday baking and the enticing aromas of holiday meals.
The next green aspect of natural greens is that they're renewable resources. No trees are cut down to provide the boughs most companies use for Christmas wreaths and other holiday decorations. Instead, a healthy pruning is the rule: boughs are harvested, but the trees re-grow them for harvest on a rotation basis. Even broadleaf evergreens like salal and bay, used for accents, are harvested in a sustainable rotation.
A responsible evergreens firm will use only noble fir boughs that are certified by its state's department of agriculture as free from Phytophthora ramorum, or Sudden Oak Death, a fungus which affects noble fir and other trees and shrubs all over the country. This certification means that no greens used by the firm will endanger fir, oak or other susceptible species in other places to which they are shipped.
Earth-friendly evergreen firms use local greenery in their Christmas wreaths or Hanukkah wreaths, and in their garlands, swags and centerpieces, not something that's shipped in from halfway across the country. They support local tree-farm operations, which benefit the environment, and buy from harvesters who lease public or private forest land for resources like boughs and cones, thus adding to the local economy. Large-scale, carefully organized shipping operations make the most economic use of fuels for distribution.
Earth-friendly gifts of greens from the forest, and eco-smart evergreen decorations in the home, simply make good sense. And good scents. Enjoy.
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