{"id":171228,"date":"2025-12-07T00:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171228\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T00:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T00:28:09","slug":"waterloos-christmas-tree-lab-is-trying-to-save-a-long-standing-tradition-from-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/171228\/","title":{"rendered":"Waterloo’s Christmas Tree Lab is trying to save a long-standing tradition from climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Christmas trees farms across Ontario haven\u2019t been spared by the devastating impacts of climate change, but a lab out of the University of Waterloo (UW) is pushing to curb the effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UW\u2019s Christmas Tree Lab, founded in 2022, collaborates with Christmas tree farms across the province in their research to foster a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly industry in the face of climate change, while offering education and advocacy materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The lab\u2019s director, Kelsey Leonard, said yields at some of these farms are impacted by major climate events, everything from extreme heat and drought to what she describes as \u201cerratic freeze-thaw cycles.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of sounds strange, right? How can you have drought and flood and erratic freeze and thaw cycles, but because we just have such a biodiverse region from Windsor to Ottawa Valley, to up north and northern Ontario, we actually are in one growing season seeing all of these different types of events,\u201d Leonard explains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe owners of Chickadee Christmas Trees in Puslinch, Ont., say some trees take 13 years to grow to the right height for selling. (James Chaarani\/CBC)<\/p>\n

There are over 400 Christmas tree farms in Ontario, more than any other province in Canada, Leonard says. The trees they produce have much less of an impact on the environment than fake ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a climate-friendly choice,\u201d Leonard says. \u201cWhen we think about an artificial tree, they\u2019re made from byproducts of fossil fuels, they\u2019re often shipped long distances.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For an artificial Christmas tree to have the same carbon footprint as a real one, it would need to be used for more than 20 years, according to the David Suzuki Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Leonard says that this isn\u2019t happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re unfortunately becoming a fast fad fashion,\u201d she explains. \u201cPeople are turning out their artificial trees every two to three years.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Climate related delays in growth<\/p>\n

Climate has had such an impact that Leonard says what used to take a Christmas tree seven to 10 years to grow now takes eight to 12 \u2014 something that Joe Wareham with Chickadee Christmas Trees in Puslinch, Ont., has found on their farm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taking longer now though with the hot, dry summers,\u201d Wareham explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pines tend to grow a little bit faster. The spruces are kind of medium and the fir trees are the ones that usually take 12 years, 13 years to get a good height and good growth on them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wareham says they deal with a number of other issues like frost sticking around later than usual and pests, but the major challenge they face is around extreme heat in the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AJoe Wareham and his wife Alison McCrindle own Chickadee Christmas Trees in Puslinch, Ont. (James Chaarani\/CBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to have a huge amount of patience,\u201d he says. \u201cYou got to be tough. You got to be able to work hard in the heat. If you don\u2019t get rain you have to find out some way to irrigate your trees whether you do it by hand or you do it with some sort of mechanical means.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wareham says that along with several other growers they work with to supply their trees, they\u2019re thinking of new ways to stay more sustainable and affordable, like experimenting with how they grow the trees. They also sell a variety of different types of Christmas trees \u2014 something that helps since each variant reacts to climate events differently.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things about Ontario growers \u2014 they\u2019re really showing us how to be climate leaders,\u201d says Leonard. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking about biodiversity, they are also thinking about species diversity so we actually have a lot of resiliency already present in farms across Ontario.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-171228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}