Christmas trees add to holiday cheer

Thousands of Christmas trees have arrived in Bermuda this week from the hills of Quebec.

In the last couple of weeks the Oleander and the Bermuda Islander have shipped in around 24 containers crammed full of more than 5,000 festive trees for islanders as well as the Corporation of Hamilton.

13 containers

The Oleander unloaded 13 containers of Christmas trees earlier this week and will be back again next Monday with a further five containers.

While the Bermuda Islander is scheduled to bring in another four containers when she arrives in Hamilton tomorrow.

Each container contains between 200 and 300 pre-wrapped trees, most of which have been grown specifically for households in Bermuda in Canada.

The trees are then trucked down to New Jersey a few weeks before they loaded onto the Bermuda container vessels and shipped to the island.

For businesses the process of getting the trees brought into Bermuda began all the way back in April when suppliers and trees were identified and sectioned off in North America.

Infection

Julie Greaves, general manager at Aberfeldy, told the Bermuda Sun that the Paget garden firm is expecting around 900 trees to be brought in this year.

She added: “Previously we have brought in our trees from North Carolina, but this year we have got our trees from Quebec because of a pine needle scale infection that has affected some parts of the US.

“Pre-inspections tend to be carried out by Government officials in October and our first batch arrived last Friday.

“We do everything we can to make sure that we provide the freshest trees possible, and there’s nothing quite like opening the container when it arrives and getting a blast of that Christmas smell.”

Sousa’s

Sousa’s Landscaping Management, in Southampton, has also ordered just shy of a thousand trees from Quebec.

General manager, Lindsay Sousa, said: “This is definitely the busiest time of the year for us.

“We bring in two different types of trees, the Balsam and the Fraser Fern, and they tend to come in in three shipments starting at Thanksgiving.

“The number we can get in a container really depends on the weather at the time the trees are loaded.

“Obviously if they are frozen they tend to take up more space.”