The Only Compost Christmas Tree in the World:  THE GARLAND TEXAS COMPOST CHRISTMAS TREE.

You must come to the Garland Community Garden to see the world’s only compost Christmas tree.  This tree is about three-quarters filled with leaves.  By the end of December it will be completely filled.  The soil being made inside this tree will be distributed in the garden in October of 2017.

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On December 1, Loving Garland Green officially ended our first November Leaf Awareness month.  Over the last week of November I moved 685 bags of leaves to various places in the garden.  About half of the bags have already been opened, and the rest are by the places in the garden where they will be opened and spread.

December 1 marked what I thought would be the last of the 685 leaf bags but when Charlie and I came down to the garden last night to check the solar lights on the tree, we saw that a citizen(s) had left thirteen more bags of leaves.  This is fine as we have a policy of accepting bags of leaves from the public year-round.  Of course we would prefer the leaves are left where they fall as this is the most eco-friendly process; however, that is not always possible in urban areas—thus bringing them to us is preferable to leaving them curbside to go to the Hinton landfill.

The soil for all the beds at the Garland Community Garden has been created from leaves, paper, wood, and other decaying organic matter such as raw spoiled vegetable matter.  

The overwhelming majority of the 685 bags of leaves came from the Firewheel area as I personally picked up 500 of them from that area.  I am happy to report that from all the bags I only had to deal with five plastic water bottles, one flowerpot and one beer can.  The bags were overwhelmingly filled only with leaves—much of which had already been mulched. 

Today (December 2) someone dropped off fifteen more bags of leaves making a total thus far of 713 bags of leaves rescued from the landfill.  At an average of 30 pounds per bag, this is 21,290 pounds.  This may sound like a lot, but unfortunately 713 bags of leaves is tiny when measured against the bags of leaves that are likely taken each year from the homes of Garland residents to the Hinton landfill.  Given our approximate 80,000 households and estimating low at five leaf bags per household, we send close to a half million bags of leaves to the landfill each year.

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Our Leaf Keeper is merry now—Nothing like 700+ bags of leaves saved from the landfill to make a leaf keeper smile with joy!  He will be smiling by the Compost Christmas Tree throughout the month of December. – Garland Community Garden Dec 2, 2016.  We invite you to come see him.