If it’s hard to let go of your fresh-cut Christmas tree this year, or if you just don’t want to go to the dump again, you have a surprising number of options for other things to do with it.
Here are 10 of our best ideas.
Feed some goats
Goats love eating Christmas trees. In the winter, evergreens are a good source of food for them, and the holiday trees make a nice treat.
Make sure the tree wasn’t sprayed with any coloring, decoration or chemical preservative, and check for any stray ornament hooks or plastic tinsel before you bring it in the goat pen. It’s also great fun to watch them tear into the greens. If you don’t have goats of your own, local farms may be taking donations, but check first.
Make some tea
Pine needle tea is a great winter beverage, providing vitamins A and C (no scurvy in 2025!). It’s made by chopping about a tablespoon of needles and covering them with a cup of boiling water. You can do the same with spruce and fir. This one is a better idea for trees you cut yourself or know the origins of.
Build a bird feeder
Brought outside, a Christmas tree is a practical and festive base for feeding wild birds and offering them shelter until the needles drop. You can hang feeders or suet cages from its branches, add peanut butter or suet balls and make berry garlands to accessorize.
Add a compost layer
This can be a good time of year to start raised beds, especially the easy “lasagna compost” method, which makes layers of nitrogen and carbon material that break down into soil. Cut the tree into pieces and use it as one of your carbon layers. Their needles are good compost ingredients on their own, too.
Shelter fish
Tree branches provide habitat for food and spawning and predator protection for freshwater fish and other organisms. They fall and decompose into water features on their own, too, and are an important part of pond structure. If you have water on your property, they might enjoy some clean branches, especially pine.
Fight erosion
Maine beaches are starting to use old Christmas trees to combat coastal erosion. You can plant living trees at your home on embankments or slopes you’re struggling with.
Repurpose the wood
With just a hand saw, you can turn most trees into useful homestead projects. Straight branches can be turned into garden markers if you shave a little bark off so there’s space to write. Longer branches can become plant stakes or trellises. Depending on its thickness, the trunk could be sliced into rounds or longways into basic planks for projects. The wood might be a little sap-sticky, but is soft and easy to work with.
Make some mulch
If you have access to a wood chipper, the tree can be used to keep down weeds in your garden pathways, mulch your fruit trees or supplement your compost pile. EcoMaine also offers a map of places that dispose of trees sustainably by chipping or mulching them.
Feed some deer, or keep them away
Like goats, deer browse on evergreen trees, and a clean Christmas tree can be returned to the woods for them. When boughs are cut and placed over garden plants and shrubs, they can also distract and deter deer, according to Michigan State University’s cooperative extension.
Return from whence they came
If all of this is just too much work after the holidays, chuck the tree back into the woods (yours, or ones you have permission for). Decaying trees return important nutrients to the soil and play an important role in forest health. They also provide shelter for wildlife.
