As the countdown to Christmas continues, tree farmers are preparing for a well-earned rest.
After spending 11 months of the year painstakingly growing hundreds of thousands of trees, they can finally put their feet up because December is, perhaps surprisingly, the quietest time for those in the Christmas tree industry.
Once shops and garden centres are well-stocked with the seasonal saplings, there is little more for farmers to do than sell the odd fir to individual customers.
In January, however, the hard work starts again in earnest at sites across Tayside and Fife.
Among those eagerly anticipating the arrival of Christmas Eve is Brian Hughes, whose family has owned Tayside Forestry, at Templeton, near Dundee, for 60 years.
He revealed the sheer amount of effort that goes into ensuring homes across the UK have a fragrant fir to decorate.
“We start preparing for Christmas in July,” he said. “I would say that most of our trees are sold by that point and we spend August and September labelling them all.
“A team of four people will be dedicated to that and making sure the labels are on the trees for the customers.
“We started harvesting the wholesale trees this year on November 10 and that will be us right up until November 29.
“After that, we will focus on our own customers.”
Mr Hughes told The Courier that the trend for real trees is growing.
He added: “I have found that people are actually switching from artificial trees to real trees. It’s a sustainable and natural product as opposed to something fake that has been made in China.”
There are only around 25 tree farms in the UK that grow more than 10,000 saplings, with around 15 of these in Scotland.
The Scottish climate is ideal for growing Christmas trees, as it offers the cold and wet conditions they need to flourish.
Hundreds of thousands of firs make their way from Tayside to every corner of the UK, from Orkney to Bristol.Five things you may not know about Christmas trees The average Christmas tree is 10 to 15 years old. Saplings are planted when they reach the age of four years and spend the next few years getting to the optimum height of 5 to 6ft. The most popular Christmas trees in Tayside are the Nordmann fir and Fraser fir. Hailing from Turkey and North Carolina respectively, they are favoured for their needle retention and fragrance. Aphids are the biggest threat for firs. Trees must be sprayed twice a year and checked every two weeks. A simple task until you consider some farms can have as many as 600,000 trees. Denmark produces the most Christmas trees in Europe, but the UK is now almost self-sufficient and rarely imports trees any more. The first decorated Christmas tree was in Riga, Latvia, in 1510.