It is the traditional focal point of the festive season – but it has taken many years of care and expertise to nurture the perfect crop of Christmas trees.
With Christmas less than a month away, thoughts are turning to the festive decorations in our homes, hallways and town centres.
But while many of us only consider the style and size of our centrepiece when the big day draws near, the planning for the perfect crop of Christmas trees started many years ago.
For one major East Anglian grower, this weekend marks the launch of the festive retail trade – and the culmination of a monumental effort to produce pines and spruces of the right quality and quantity to meet seasonal demand.
Elveden Estate, which spans the Norfolk-Suffolk border near Thetford, expects to sell about 6,000 trees to domestic customers, some as tall as 20ft.
Another 2,000 will go to large civic and corporate displays in cities including Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff.
Half of those are grown on sustainable plantations at Elveden, and the other half at partner sites in northern England and Scotland.
The largest tree harvested by the state's forestry team this year was a 65-footer grown in Scotland which will decorate the city centre in Glasgow. A 35ft tree was the biggest grown at Elveden itself, destined for as client in London.
James Holliday, rural manager at Elveden, said they all started life as seeds germinated at a nursery, and planted as two-year-old seedlings each February.
'We will take care of them until they are six years old, when the first ones are starting to become ready,' he said. 'They are 6-7ft at that stage, which are the most popular sizes.
'All the trees are felled by a chainsaw operator, and that's a very skilled job to make sure they don't damage the branches. Then the trees are extracted from the forest block and they go through an operation known as baling, which wraps the trees and protects the branches and makes them more handleable. Then they will go onto the holding area here where the orders are made up, they are loaded onto lorries by crane and despatched to their final destination.
'It is brilliant to see people in all parts of the UK wanting a home-grown Christmas tree.'
Part of the difficulty of the long-term planning is predicting demand and consumer trends when planting a crop which won't be ready for several years, said Mr Holliday.
'We are looking at what has happened in the past and what we believe will be the trends in the future,' he said. 'Last year the Nordmann fir was just ahead of Norway spruce. Ten or 15 years ago there were very few Nordmann firs on the market, but now people want that tree with the minimal needle drop, as opposed to the Norway spruce. We are always trying to see where the future growth might be.'
Elveden started growing Christmas trees in the 1970s as part of a farm diversification project, and now employees a 30-strong team for the growing, felling and despatch operation, with about 1,500 trees in stock today for the opening weekend.
The plantation covers 100 hectares, with trees planted in a standard grid spacing to aid their management and the symmetry of growth.
In previous years many of the largest trees supplied by the estate have come from Kielder forest in Northumberland, where Elveden's forestry teams were sent to harvest more mature specimens.
But Mr Holliday said a pest problem forced them to look elsewhere this year.
'This year we couldn't take any out of Kielder because of the green spruce aphid,' he said. 'We had to find other sites. We cut in Perthshire, Lanarkshire, the Scottish Borders and Lancashire.
'We don't tend to see the aphid down here as it likes a moist warm climate. A bigger problem for us is usually drought stress. But this year we had 200pc of our rainfall in June compared to the average, so this year has been a cracking growing season for trees. We have lacked the cold winter which turns the trees dormant. They will be a good colour and they have had decent growth this year.'
Like any other conventional commercial crop, the estate will irrigate the trees where necessary and use pesticides and fungicide sprays up to four times a year if needed.
'Most of them are on a drip-line irrigation system, so we will do that as and when necessary,' said Mr Holliday.
'They are farmed, but it is about achieving that balance to get the desired end crop in the most sustainable manner we can.
'We do try other things as well. This year instead of spraying for weed control I have started grazing Shropshire sheep from the estate, because they will eat anything but Christmas trees. It has worked really well.'
REAL OR ARTIFICIAL?
Elveden was the first Christmas tree producer to become UKWAS (United Kingdom Woodland Assurance Scheme) certified by the Soil Association, an independent certification standard for verifying sustainable woodland management in the United Kingdom.
Mr Holliday said ecological sustainability was one of the best arguments for choosing a real tree over an artificial one.
He said: 'Tradition has got a lot to do with it, but the other thing is the trees are providing a habitat for biodiversity and a landscape feature.
'They are also taking carbon out of the atmosphere, where the artificial trees are a high carbon generator. They are renewable and they are recyclable, so all the trees we bring back here are chipped and used as garden mulch on the estate, or used in the hedging business as a weed suppressant.'
TYPES OF TREE
Elveden grows three types of Christmas tree.
• Fraser fir: Narrow and pyramid-shaped with flat, shiny, deep green needles providing dense, soft foliage.
• Nordmann fir: Popular due to its symmetric shape, strong branches and low needle drop. The needles are shiny, mid green and soft to touch.
• Norway spruce: The most traditional British Christmas tree. It is deemed attractive, with the classic forest scent.
ORIGINS OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE
While worshiping trees and decorating evergreens has happened for thousands of years the Christmas tree as we know it is believed to have originated in eastern Europe and Germany, with evidence of guilds having decorated trees for winter in the 15th century.
After the Reformation upper-class German families began to have trees in their homes and the practice began to spread throughout German society and then in the 19th century it permeated the rest of Europe's nobility.
In Britain the tradition did not go far beyond the Royal family for many years until Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert, when the tradition gained more general popularity and became more widespread.
Christmas at Elveden brings a series of weekend family attractions including visits by reindeers, singing elves and Father Christmas. Starting today, there will also be Newfoundland dogs from 11am-3pm every weekend until December 18 , which will tow Christmas trees to customers' cars in return for a donation to selected charities.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here