Alison McCrindle often hears people say her life sounds like a Hallmark movie when she tells them she and her husband grow Christmas trees.
She understands why.
“You see the joy of this tradition that people are either starting in their lives or have done forever,” said McCrindle, who has run Chickadee Christmas Trees in the southwestern Ontario township of Puslinch since 1997.
But for some Canadian Christmas tree growers, it can be hard to have bright spirits when they think about changes happening in the industry. Many worry about how climate change is impacting Christmas trees — and their future.
McCrindle and her husband, the farm’s only full-time staff, plant about 1,000 trees a year and water each sapling by hand. Warmer temperatures mean they now spend more time watering the saplings, as well as some of their older trees, to save them from drought.
But they cannot give this care to each tree.
“We just don’t have the means to water them all,” she said, noting she worries some tree species will not survive in 10 or 15 years.
Industry changes
Canadian Christmas trees are some of the most recognized global images of Christmas, sources say.
The balsam fir, considered by many to be the iconic Christmas tree, is native to Canada and parts of the U.S. Many Christmas movies are even filmed at Canadian Christmas tree farms.
“When audiences worldwide watch these cozy Christmas films and are drawn into the culture of Christmas, they’re actually seeing Canadian farms,” said Kelsey Leonard, a climate adaptation scientist and director of the Christmas Tree Lab at the University of Waterloo.
“They’re seeing Canadian landscapes, and they’re seeing Canadian traditions or interpretations of Christmas that wind up shaping the culture of the world,” she added.
While Christmas trees remain in demand, the industry is in flux.
In 2024, Canadian tree farmers exported more than 1.6 million Christmas trees, down from about 2.4 million in 2021.
Matt Wright, a Christmas tree grower in New Germany, N.S., says this decline is partly due to more Canadian growers sending their trees across Canada. As well, many Christmas tree growers are retiring.
But his biggest industry concern is about how climate change is impacting the young trees that are still growing.
Wright says he first began noticing autumn temperatures staying warmer for longer in the 1990s; then the summers became hotter. Now, winter stretches into spring, and wet springs are followed quickly by hot, dry summers.
“We don’t have that gradual transition any more from season to season,” he said.
“The last number of years have [been] incredible and much more dramatic,” he said, referring to recent floods and droughts.
Christmas trees are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather because of their long growth time.
It typically takes Christmas trees between seven and 10 years to reach a height consumers want, so multiple extreme weather events can significantly stunt their growth.
“Unlike an annual crop, where maybe you’re hit by drought once, with Christmas trees, you could be hit by drought multiple times within the lifetime of a tree,” said McCrindle, of Chickadee Christmas Trees. Many of her farm’s trees now take more than a decade to grow.
Climate change also affects the soil around trees, says Wright, because frost no longer sinks in as deeply as it once did. This creates optimal conditions for harmful soil-based diseases to spread.
The changing weather patterns also impact insects, he says. Insects are changing when they attack trees or what parts of the tree they eat.
Wright is particularly concerned that climate change may jeopardize the historic way to grow Christmas trees in Nova Scotia: at natural Christmas tree stands. In natural farming, trees grow from seeds that fall from other trees.
Hotter temperatures may force farmers to make irrigation systems for their natural tree farms, which is too costly for most farmers, he says. Some may have to turn these lots into fields in a few decades, he says.
He fears growers will have to “walk away from those lots because it’s no longer viable to grow.”
‘Secondary crop’
Researchers say one of the problems Christmas tree farmers face is that they do not always qualify for crop insurance.
Climate adaptation plans, from all levels of government, do not often include Christmas trees — despite their environmental benefits.
Christmas trees are often classified as ornamental crops, says Leonard, at the Christmas Tree Lab, who has studied crop insurance programs in Ontario.
“[Christmas trees are] seen as almost something that is less critical to Canadian economic well-being or … maybe a secondary crop,” she said.
“Christmas trees have been boxed into this corner from a policy lens that has excluded them from a lot of the programs that help other farmers and other sectors survive these climate extremes.”
Leonard says Christmas trees should be valued more for their contributions to biodiversity.
Most Ontario Christmas tree growers plant on average four different tree species, says Leonard. This allows them to grow trees that thrive in various soil types.
“Farms act like miniature forests in rural Ontario,” she said. “Because [of] their long growth cycles, they’re protecting soil. They’re reducing erosion. They’re helping to maintain moisture when we do have significant drought years.”
Christmas trees could easily be added to crop insurance policies and climate adaptation strategies to give farmers more support, she says.
‘Nature can amaze us’
In the meantime, many Canadian Christmas tree farmers — and their crops — are figuring out how to adapt.
Wright was worried how the trees he exports to Panama would fare after a dry summer. But he says the needles on the trees did not dry out.
“Nature can amaze us in that it’s incredible what these plants can do under stress,” he said.
Wright does not think the government’s role is to directly subsidize farmers. Instead, he wants governments to fund more research and development so the Christmas tree industry has more information about climate change adaptation.
“It’s up to us as entrepreneurs to take that knowledge and apply it to the field and make it work.”
In Puslinch, McCrindle credits her husband with working hard to save their farm from “catastrophic” losses. Crop insurance would be nice, she says, but hard work is what protects them from disaster.
“We just slug it out here and take our losses and just keep working harder to make sure we don’t have the losses.”
She has reason to feel optimistic.
Despite 2025 being the region’s hottest summer in 70 years, this year was a good year for their business. The couple had been tending a group of trees for years, waiting for them to be tall enough to sell as pre-cut trees. This year, the trees were finally ready.
The new trees are a reminder of what McCrindle says is key to Christmas tree farming.
“When it comes down to it, it is a bit of hard work and a labour of love.”
