Decorated Christmas tree on Weekend Kitchen
Angela Slater
16 December 2014
Daughter of a farmer and market gardener so have always had a connection with the outdoors, whether it was keeping animals or producing fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. Along with my work at Hayes Garden World I also have a smallholding, mainly breeding rare breed pigs. I gained an HND and BSc in Conservation and Environmental Land Management, as a result I am an ardent environmentalist and have a keen interest in environmentally friendly gardening. In my time at Hayes I worked for several years in the Outdoor Plant and Houseplant areas

Hayes’ Artificial Christmas Tree Featured On Popular TV Show

Hayes’ Artificial Christmas Tree featured on popular TV show

One of Hayes’ artificial Christmas trees is starring in Channel 4’s Weekend Kitchen during the run up to Christmas. The artificial tree is an 8’ (240cm) pre-lit Weeping Spruce. There are 800 soft white LED lights on the tree, which means that they should last for up to 50,000 hours and cost very little to run. Unusually for LED’s these bulbs are replaceable, spare bulbs are supplied with the tree and will be available for 5 years after purchase.

Pre-lit Weeping Spruce artificial Christmas tree

The actual tree branches are moulded on real branches, to give it an almost imperceptible look of a real tree, enough to fool the show’s presenter, Steve Jones, from a distance of a couple of feet! It is a mixture of PE and PVC branches, with the more realistic PE on the outside and the PVC on the inside. This keeps the cost down and once it is decorated you cannot see the inside branches. It is a very full tree with 3,021 tips, which are slightly downswept, and measures 65” (165cm) in diameter at the base.

Pre-lit Weeping Spruce artificial Christmas tree

Simon Lycett, the internationally renowned florist, gave some excellent tips on how to decorate your Christmas tree, and used a mixture of traditional red, gold and copper baubles and edible decorations; candy canes, bundles of cinnamon sticks and gingerbread men. The addition of red ribbon bows fills the tree without breaking the bank. As Simon says, you cannot have too many decorations on the Christmas tree! The final decorative touches to the tree were some decorations made by chef Emily Watkins’ children. The decorative effect was completed by placing wrapped gifts, in red and gold, around the base of the tree.