City hall saps the joy out of Christmas trees
Mark Dawe is down to his last 400 Christmas trees, leaving his fourhectare slice of Auckland looking strikingly bare.
The Whenuapai farm was once brimming with about 4000 Christmas trees, but he stopped planting about five years ago based on Auckland Council’s development predictions.
But the council’s now put off those plans leaving him saying he’s missed out on a potential Christmas-time income of $150,000.
The rigmarole has hit Dawe and his wife hard. He’d been in the business for about 20 years and loved seeing the joy when families picked their own Christmas trees from the bunch.
But when the council indicated development would go ahead fast, the Dawes stopped planting the 20cm seedlings they would harvest as 2.5m trees two years later. Their plan was to subdivide, sell up and retire.
‘‘But now council changed their minds and said it is probably going to be several years away before anything happens to us.’’
The couple typically sold at least 600 trees per year, and with a conservative average price of $50 each, over five years, Dawe estimated the council’s change of mind has cost him about $150,000.
‘‘We’ve always pruned our trees by hand, not machine like the others. It makes the trees less dense.
‘‘People like our trees because ornaments just hang better on them.’’
Meanwhile, to keep his customers happy, he’s been supplementing his own dwindling stocks with trees he’s bought elsewhere at wholesale.
But Dawe said it would never be the same as the magic of growing his own.