Farming Holiday Magic

Louisiana's Christmas Tree Industry

Finding Louisiana's tree

By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

For my parents, my first Christmas marked eleven sleepless months with a child who hated almost everything except riding on the four-wheeler. When they started receiving, from other family members, “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments, they decided they couldn’t put it off any longer—they needed to put up a tree. “I’ve got this,” my dad told my mom. He plopped me in front of him on the four-wheeler seat, and together we drove into the pasture. The pine tree he determined “perfect,” and chopped down to a reasonable size for the living room has lived on in family lore for twenty-five years now as “the ugliest Charlie Brown tree you ever saw”. Of course, I don’t remember the trip or the tree, but this is one of my favorite stories.

The next December, my parents gathered the courage to bring me and my new little brother to the Christmas tree farm about an hour away, in Grant, Louisiana. The photographic evidence of this visit still exists: two chunky toddlers in red Christmas sweaters sitting between rows of far fancier pines than our tree the year prior.

That year, 1997, was the same that Gray and Mol lie Anderson officially took over Grant Christmas Tree Farm, which Mollie’s parents had operated since 1983.

Twenty-five years later, when I return to the proper ty—found along the windy rural backroads of Central Louisiana—I drive beneath a “Welcome” sign held by two wooden cut-out gnomes, dangling from the branches of a live oak.

Clarke Gernon (left) working on his Christmas tree farm at Shady Pond in Pearl River, which he started in 1979.

Photo by Linda Duhon. Courtesy of Clarke Gernon.

Small log cabins dot the front yard—bathrooms, a concession stand, the gift shop—along with exhibits of various antique farming mechanisms. There’s a small collie, Julie, trotting around, a horse named Sailor studying the guests from her pen, and Little Girl the donkey, hee-hawing in the distance. An incredible petting zoo—where baby goats had been born every day of the week prior to my visit—is delightfully integrated with the children’s playground. There’s even a “Tower of Baabel”—climb-able by kids, human and animal alike.

Onsite, the Andersons also keep over two hundred bee boxes for honey harvesting; grow crops of pumpkins, sugar cane, sunflowers, and zinnias; and operate a fully functional old-fashioned cane syrup mill—which sweetens the air, commingling with the scents of evergreens.

Because, of course, there are also the trees. As far the eye can see—almost one hundred acres of tall trees, baby trees, fat trees, skinny trees, trees with golden tips, trees that look almost blue. All carefully trimmed into that symbolic Christmas cone. It’s disorienting and magical, the way they are all lined up—extending by the thousand-fold into the horizon.

Sitting on a bench in the outdoor classroom, I join about seventy-five first graders on a field trip to learn about all of the work involved in growing Louisiana Christmas trees. Mollie, her Pine Belt twang extending a special level of expertise, starts at the beginning: “How do you get a baby Christmas tree?” One little boy, full of confidence, blurts out: “seeds!” Actually, Mollie explains, these trees don’t make seeds! One little girl tries for “water” before another nails it: “branches!”

She explains that every year, around Valentine’s Day, Gray and his five-person team go out and collect about sixty-thousand cuttings (eliciting a “wowwww” from the audience) from the mature trees already on their farm—a process that takes about a month. From there, each cutting must be trimmed by hand, treated with a root stimulator, and planted in a tray with 125 other cuttings. By March, the Grant Farms on site nursery is filled. Trees are watered every day, and by May, hopefully about eighty percent will have grown roots. At this point, the baby trees are transferred to pots, where they will live and grow for about a year, before being transferred to a larger pot to grow for another year. Then, if all goes according to plan, the two-year-old tree has earned a spot in the field—where it will grow for three more years before finally meeting its long-awaited purpose as the centerpiece of some family’s holiday celebration.

The History of the Christmas Tree Industry in Louisiana

Some of the first experiments in Christmas tree agriculture in Louisiana took place in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to this, trees were mostly shipped into the region from Northern farms—where cooler, drier, higher altitude climates are more suitable to growing the trees people think of as Christmas trees.

With the second half of the twentieth century, though, came a handful of daring Louisiana foresters, scientists, and farmers who were increasingly intrigued by the emerging efforts of nearby states to develop Christmas tree cultivars that survived and even thrived in the South. In 1956, Alexandria’s Optimist Club consulted with a forester and agronomist about five species of trees that had been successful in Alabama; they planted four-thousand of them near Pineville to use for their annual Christmas tree sale (which previously sourced trees from the usual Northern suspects). The Town Talk, which had published the announcement, never reported any updates—suggesting it may have been a failure, as many of these early attempts were.

At the time, the LSU School of Forestry and Wildlife Management was doing early research on several species to determine which would be most likely to succeed, and which would yield the greatest economic returns for farmers. At the beginning, the studies—conducted at the University’s Dean Lee Forest Experimentation Station—indicated Virginia Pine as the most promising, along with Eastern Red Cedar, Arizona Cypress, and Shortleaf Pine.

In 1964, the Louisiana Forestry Commission made some seedlings available to local landowners. One farm, owned by the Conly brothers of Bienville Parish, planted ten thousand Arizona Cypress in an old cotton field. The next year, they planted ten thousand more, plus three thousand Red Cedar. Fighting blight, weeds, grass, and various other challenges—the Conlys ended up with only twenty trees suitable for Christmas by 1969. While other nearby farmers who had tried their hand at it gave up, the Conlys pushed onward—learning a little more each year, shifting to Virginia Pine, starting to grow their own seedlings. By 1972, they had eight hundred trees ready for market.

That same year, the Monroe News-Star reported that the industry in Louisiana had finally reached a point of economic feasibility. Presentations and workshops were being held across the region, students participating in 4-H were doing projects on Christmas trees, and farmers everywhere—especially in the Northshore areas and in Central-North Louisiana—were planting seedlings. In 1976, a Homer newspaper called The Guardian-Journal reported that there were approximately 100,000 Christ mas trees growing between Louisiana and Mississippi, which had resulted in the formation of the Louisiana-Mississippi Christmas Tree Growers Association (today called the Southern Christmas Tree Growers Association). Describing the response of consumers, the reporter wrote: “Louisiana people love to have Louisiana-grown trees.”

Trees of varying ages and species growing at Grant Tree Farm. Photo by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot.

Exotic Trees

At this point, Virginia Pine was the most popular tree grown across the region, by far. They were best suited to the Louisiana climate, and they grew relatively quickly—up to six feet in just three years.

Clarke Gernon, though, wasn’t dazzled by the Virginia Pine. He found it medio cre when compared to the northern varieties—not good enough simply because it was what grew easily here. These were Christmas trees we were talking about! He wanted to grow something here that was magical.

Gernon started growing Christmas trees in 1979, shortly after inheriting his family property, Shady Pond, in Pearl River. He was fulfilling a childhood dream, sparked one Christmas years before when at age eleven he and his mother had been unable to source a tree from any of the stores for miles around. When they got home, he walked into the woods beside their home, got a cross saw, and took down a pine tree. “Jordan, that was the ugliest Christmas tree I ever saw in my whole life. But we all loved it,” he said.

After being disappointed by his first batch of Virginia Pines, Gernon started think ing more creatively. “I committed myself to move into exotic trees,” he said. He placed orders for small amounts of several different varieties and promptly transformed his farm into an experimentation hub. “As much as I could come up with, we would try it,” he said. “And many of them succeeded. Some did not. But many of them did.” The names read like those of characters in a fantasy novel: Deodar Cedar. King William’s Pine. Silver Smoke. Blue Ice. Southern White Pine. Gold Cup. “The result of doing that was that Mother Nature forced us to create a botanical display of all the different trees. Which, as it developed, became stunningly beautiful.”

Gernon was one of the first Louisiana tree farmers to bring in exotics, and over forty years later Shady Pond remains one of the largest and most diverse Christmas tree operations in the region. Over the last four decades, he’s also served in various positions within the Southern Christmas Tree Association and the National Christmas Tree Association, often acting as a spokesperson in media outlets ranging from the Times Picayune to the Today Show.

At Shady Pond, Gernon’s standardized and customized his planting process to the point where “the loss of even a single tree is rare” today, thanks to a dedicated schedule of soil cultivation—by way of planting clay and iron peas, field burning, and mixing in a carefully prepared fertilizer mixture. Then, there is plowing, disking, subsoiling, harrowing. All of this is before the tree is even placed in the dirt. Gernon, a mechanical engineer by trade, modified a standard tree trimmer to better serve his purpose: trimming one tree every ten seconds.

"The trees here, they're happy as a lark," said Gernon.

The Leyland Cypress and the Carolina Sapphire

Around 1988, Gernon joined other Louisiana growers in experimenting with a new species of Christmas tree—the Leyland Cypress. A hybrid tree that was the result of an accidental cross-pollination, the Leyland was discovered in 1888 by C.J. Leyland at Leighton Hall in the South of Wales. After years of genetic modifications and development, the tree made its way to the United States during the 1940s—though its use as a Christmas tree was not widely-advertised until the 1980s, when growers in Louisiana brought seedlings onto their farms.

The success was immediate, the Leyland Cypress—particularly the Leighton Green cultivar— quickly overtook the Virginia Pine as a Louisiana farmer’s favorite. Dis ease-resistant, the tree grew in about half the time it took the pine—delivering a superior product much quicker. For consumers, the tree was attractive for its soft, shed-resistant foliage; its dark green color; and its lack of a strong scent—desirable especially for people with allergies.

A few years later, another strong alternative emerged when a small group of seedlings arrived for experimentation in St. Tammany Parish, East Baton Rouge Parish, and St. Helena Parish. The Carolina Sapphire was a variation of the Arizona Cypress already being grown throughout Louisiana—but with the remarkably distinct physical features of dense, “lacy” foliage; tiny yellow flowers; and a stunning blue color. For customers who preferred a tree with an aroma, the Sapphire emitted a fresh, lemony, minty scent.

For decades, the Sapphire was considered by many to be a novelty—“Some people found it too blue,” said Dr. Cornelis F. de Hoop, an Associate Professor in the Louisiana Forest Products Development Center at the LSU AgCenter. Because it adapted well to the Louisiana climate, most farmers started growing them—though in smaller numbers than the more “traditional” Leyland Cypress and Virginia Pine.

In recent years, though, farmers have begun to sell more Carolina Sapphires than Leylands as a result of a fungal blight that has devastated the Louisiana Leyland population. Because the Leyland is a clone, without any genetic diversity, every tree becomes susceptible. This year for the first time, the Louisiana State University Christ mas Tree Sale, conducted by the Society of American Foresters Student Chapter, will sell only Sapphires.

De Hoop, the chapter’s faculty advisor, said that the fungus affects big, foot-long sections of the trees—turning the needles yellow before they inevitably die. “They be come worthless as a Christmas tree at that point,” he said. “It’s an airborne fungus. There’s really not anything to be done about it.”

Family Christmas Tree Farms

One element of the Christmas tree industry's beauty in Louisiana's agricultural economy was its suitability as a small-scale endeavor, as a supplemental income for property owners of all sorts. In addition to the larger scale estates like Shady Pond and Grant Farms are countless smaller, family-fostered, community-driven Christmas tree growing businesses.

Leslie Hollis started growing Christmas trees the same year that Gernon did. A for ester by training, Hollis had always been interested in agriculture, and jumped on the Louisiana Christmas tree train with everyone else back in 1979. “There were several people starting small choose-and-cut Christmas tree farms back in the eighties, and most of them have dissolved or discontinued, but we’re still doing it.”

Growing mainly Virginia Pine and Leyland Cypress in Minden, Louisiana, Hollis Christmas Tree Farm welcomes the same families year after year, some of the same who bought Hollis’s very first trees. “We’ve got a lot of old faithful customers,” said Hollis. “This whole village of people.”

Today, Hollis’s son-in-law and daughter live on the property and manage the farm. “The grandchildren all help out with it, and it’s a family thing we all enjoy,” he said. In testament to this, Hollis told me that the operation once extended to Ruston—where Hollis’s father ran a Christmas tree farm for many years. And today, Hollis’s son operates a Hollis Tree Farm in Lanton, Missouri, where he now lives.

Lisa Brabham Peairs was a child when Louisiana’s first Christmas Tree farms were opening, and she begged her father, a dairy farmer, to grow some on their property. His hands full, he told her no. She remembers, though, the expectation and excitement surrounding her family’s annual search for the perfect Christmas tree in the woods near their home. “I don’t even remember what the trees looked like,” she said. “I know some of them were pretty homely, just whatever we could find—cedar tree, pine tree, whatever—but I remember going in the woods, all the kids and mom and dad. That is a big thing to me.”

A few decades later, Peairs—a veterinarian by trade—brought the same request to her husband Ricky. “We were newlyweds, and he was like ‘oh yeah, sure honey,’” Peairs laughed. In 1998, the couple started planting trees (they started with two varieties of Leyland Cypress and Blue Sapphires) on their property in Ethel, Louisiana—officially opening Windy Hills Tree Farm for business in 2001. “I finally got my Christmas tree farm,” she said.

The couple has run the farm themselves, with the help of hired workers only during selling season, for the past twenty-four years. Last year, they sold out in four days. “It’s about to get away from us. We’ve got to cut back,” she said. “It’s really more for the experience of it. I think kids remember coming to the farm and getting their tree—just doing something together as a family.”

This is a sentiment shared by Mark and Janet Tassin, who started their tree farm, Tassin Tree Farm, in Brusly, Louisiana in 2013. “We’ve grown to a point where we had to make a decision—we either had to go bigger and extend our selling time, or keep it small like it is,” said Janet. Ultimately, they decided to stay true to the spirit of the original farm—a project for their retirement, and for their family and community. Tassin Tree Farm keeps about 450 trees onsite at a time, selling about 150 each year.

When they were raising their two daughters, the Tassins would go to the Christmas Forest in Zachary every year—a tradition that the whole family eagerly looked forward to as part of their holiday. When the girls became teenagers, the Forest closed. “We drove somewhere around Slidell,” said Janet. “We had the two teenage girls and their boyfriends, and it was like two-and-a-half hours one way. Almost to the state line. By the time we got there, it was hot. People were aggravated. They were hungry. On the way home, I said, ‘Look, there is no Christmas cheer in this car. This is the last year we are cutting down a Christmas tree. I know you love this tradition, but we just can’t do it anymore; this is not fun.” At this, one of the girls posed from the backseat: “Well, we have twenty acres. Why don’t we just grow our own?” Everyone laughed, except for Mark, who worked for the LSU AgCenter. “You know,” he said, “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

The Tassins sourced their first fifty seedlings from Grant Farms—“They’re a great resource,” said Janet—and didn’t tell anyone until three years had passed. By then, they had purchased 150 more trees, all growing steadily. “We did this as an experiment, just to have a tree for our family to cut down, something fun to do all together. And they just grew.”

Growing Christmas trees in South Louisiana is more challenging than in the Central/Northern parts of the state, noted Janet. To prevent the trees’ roots from getting too wet in the South Louisiana clay soil, Mark planted on raised rows, like sugarcane, so that water could easily drain. Another challenge of living on the lower side of the state is the effect of hurricanes, which caused this year’s crop of trees (which have been growing for the past three years) to be replanted three different times. “They’ve been traumatized,” she said. “It’s interesting to see how weather can control the growth of a tree. You can look down the row and see when the hurricane hit, where it created a whole empty line of branches.” She’ll be selling these trees at a discounted price this year, she said.

Because their property is not large, and is “long and skinny,” the Tassins employ a strict sign-up process for visiting families—limiting arrivals to three families every thirty minutes (They can stay as long as they like, clarified Janet, but this controls it a little bit.). “We make it a much more personal experience,” she said.

Tearfully, Janet explained that the whole endeavor has been such a gift, a chance to relive some of her favorite memories with her children through other family’s traditions. “I see so many of these families creating a tradition that we had with our children," she said. "That means so much."

Leighton Green-Gernon

Back at Shady Pond, Gernon has been working on a ma jor new development for the Louisiana Christmas Tree in dustry. “I’ve created a new tree,” he told me.

Officially registered with the Royal Horticultural So ciety in England, the Leighton Green-Gernon cultivar of the Leyland Cypress is Gernon’s solution to the now disease-ridden Louisiana Leyland Cypress. “It is completely disease-resistant,” he said, explaining that this variation of the Leighton Green creates a protective coating of wax, which kept pathogens out. “This tree can eliminate the use of pesticides at Christmas tree farms,” he said excitedly.

It all began in 2013, when Gernon noticed that one of his Leighton Greens wasn’t being affected, at all, by the disease ravaging the rest of his crop. Gernon proceeded to clone the tree, creating about three hundred cuttings to test against his normal crop. By the end of the summer of 2015, all of the common Leylands were dead. The cloned trees were picture perfect. “To be able to watch Dar win’s law before your very eyes like that was an honor,” he said.

With the assistance of geneticist Dr. John Frampton from North Carolina State University in Ra leigh, Gernon started studying genetics, and together they con ducted more field trials. When he informed the Royal Horticultur al Society of the tree’s existence, “The British reacted very, very strongly, in a very positive way. I was giving them their tree back.”

Since 2018, Gernon sells a few of his Leighton Green-Gernons to customers every year. In early 2023, plans are underway for Mis sissippi State University to start prop agating the tree in their greenhouses—al lowing for distribution beyond Pearl River and to the rest of the South.

“This whole thing has become such a journey for me,” Gernon told me. “And you gotta understand, I’m older than dirt. This is not how I expected to spend my golden years. But it's out of this world."

Christmas Magic

Since their early beginnings, Louisiana Christmas tree farms have benefitted from the branding of “cutting down your own Christmas tree” as an experience—incorporating the holiday trap pings of hot chocolate, carol-singing, train-riding, ornament-decorating, and more. More than any other crop in the world, the Christmas tree industry is sustained on pure nostalgia, sentimentality, and symbolism.

Janet and Mark Tassin's two daughters, "Lin and Em,"—who inspired their parents to start a tree farm in 2013. Photo courtesy of Janet Tassin.

When I asked farmers about these unique qualities of their chosen crop, almost every single one of them spoke about the beauty of tradition, of watching a family return year after year to spend this holiday time together. “We’ve had couples get engaged out here,” said Janet Tassin. “And then they come back later, and they have children. Then there are older couples—like their kids were teenagers and kind of grew up, got out of the house. We won’t see them for a few years. And then they’re back, with the grandkids.” One family, she told me, came the first year Tassin Tree Farms was open, and they found a bird’s nest in the tree. “So then, the children believed there are birds’ nests in all Christmas trees,” she said. “So, every year, I collect a bird’s nest during the year and plant it in their tree.”

While speaking with Mollie Anderson at Grant Farms, an old woman walked up to us to ask a question about tagging trees. Mollie knew her name, and exactly what sort of tree she would be looking for that day. She turned to me to let me know that she was one of their generational “regulars”—one of the customers who had been coming to Grant Farms for decades, who now came with three or four carloads of her children and grandchildren and niec es and nephews. “It’s everything,” said Mollie.

This generational cycle calls to mind a theory of Gernon’s on how the evergreen came to have such symbolic power in the first place. Going back to the Druids, who history tells us designated the evergreen as the most “elite” of trees— Gernon said he believes the evergreen proved to them that “the world cannot die”. When the other trees dropped their leaves, becoming skeletons each winter, the pines and the firs and the cedars stayed true. “It proves that there will be a future, that the cycle will start over.”

Most Louisiana Christmas Tree Farms open the day after Thanksgiving, and sell out quickly. Make your plans now!

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