Preserving the Past to Advance the Future: Introducing the Christmas Tree Lab Archive
Christmas trees are a beloved symbol of the holiday season all around the world. However, the evergreens also carry a rich history in their roots; the industry's evolution and changes can tell us a lot about consumer trends, environmental insights, or grower decisions that date back more than a century. With this in mind, the Christmas Tree Lab is conducting a deep dive into the archives of seedling catalogues to see what stories they can tell us.
Archival research is a vital tool for understanding trends in any industry, and the Christmas tree sector is no different. By using archived data, the scope of available data can be expanded to include a longer range, which is vital in climate change research and for enhancing climate models (Gooding et al., 2024; McGill, 2025). Plants, in particular, reveal a rich history of climate conditions due to their phenology and direct connection to the environment (Beitler, 2020). Historical data can provide us with context for why current trends have evolved the way they have, while enabling us to look between the lines for clues of other impacting factors.
By digitizing these documents and making them accessible for farmers, researchers, industry professionals, Christmas enthusiasts, and other interested readers, the Christmas Tree Lab Archive enables us to preserve the past while advancing future research.
Many of the Christmas Tree Lab’s current research projects can be traced back to the inspiration our lab team drew from compiling this archive collection. In 2022, the library staff at the Royal Botanical Gardens assisted our team in browsing their collection of archival documents to identify all those related to Christmas trees. The archive collection we have today was provided to us thanks to the team at the Royal Botanical Gardens library and archival collections. Within their archive library, we retrieved 57 documents containing Christmas tree information, dating back as far as 1908.
The practice of growing a Christmas tree is more than just a seasonal operation. Growers spend approximately a decade cultivating their trees to prepare them for harvest. Due to this long-term investment, changes to the industry may be difficult to notice year to year. By reviewing the archives, we can view data spanning decades at a glance. These catalogues can help us to understand how the industry has changed and adapted to environmental conditions, shifts in market demands, and sustainability challenges.
The catalogues contain information on seedlings and transplants that were available for purchase in a given year. This can tell us what species were provided, the supply of each available (see Figure 1), the cost to purchase (see Figure 2, specific to Balsam fir), and the origin source of the seedlings. The changes in these variables between the years give us insights into the changes of the industry over time, and thoughts about how we can advance forward in the interest of sustainability.
Data collected from the archive catalogue collection to date:
Figure 1: Tree species that were available for purchase in that year from any of the 4 nurseries. Tree species have been included provided that they were available that year from at least one of the catalogue options. (Data source: Christmas Tree Lab Archive Data Set, 2025).
Figure 2: Changes in Balsam fir seedling pricing in cost per 100 and cost per 1000, for seedlings that were available in the size range of 3-10”. Archive data between 1976-2003 was not included in this figure as the smallest seedling size available did not meet the sizing requirements and altered the consistency of price changes. In years where multiple catalogues were recorded, the best available price for that year was included in this data set. (Data source: Christmas Tree Lab Archive Data Set, 2025).
Table 1: Extracted price breakdown from Figure 2 of 2 different years to highlight the changes in the value of bulk seedling purchasing
(Data source: Christmas Tree Lab Archive Data Set, 2025).
All of the catalogues we have collected to date are available on our website. We will continue to build a public digital archive to document these catalogues and any research connections that emerge from them. If you are a Christmas tree grower who would like to provide us with your historical catalogues or product brochures to help us continue to build this record please feel free to connect with us at: christmastree.lab@uwaterloo.ca
