Used holiday trees make useful mulch

By Timothy Pratt

Friday, Dec. 27, 2002 | 11:29 a.m.

Christmas trees can be dropped off for recycling through Jan. 5, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the following sites:

Cheyenne Sports Complex, 3500 E. Cheyenne Ave.

Desert Breeze Park, at Flamingo Road and Durango Drive

The Gardens at Las Vegas Springs, 3701 W. Alta Drive

Mission Hills Park, 551 E. Mission Drive

Mountain Crest Park, 4702 N. Durango Drive

Nellis Meadows Park, 4949 E. Cheyenne Ave.

Seastrand Park, 6330 Camino Eldorado

Sunset Park, Sunset Road and Eastern Avenue

Whitney Ranch Recreation Center, 1575 Galleria Drive

Liberty Pointe Park, Green Valley and Paseo Verde parkways

One man's trash is another man's treasure, the saying goes. It is especially true when it comes to Christmas trees once Christmas is over.

To Linn Mills, horticulturalist at the The Gardens at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, formerly the Desert Demonstration Gardens, the thousands of unsold or used pines that the Las Vegas Valley Water District will be grinding into mulch from now until Jan. 5 will give life to plants at the gardens.

"These trees are basically a Christmas present for our plants," Mills said.

But to workers at the dozens of lots that sell Christmas trees, the evergreens left over after Dec. 25 are a bitter reminder of how this year's sales were lower than any year in memory, workers said.

Phil Motceo, who has worked at a lot on Eastern Avenue and Windmill Parkway for seven years, said he had more trees unsold than ever before -- "at least a couple of hundred."

He was one of a crew of five that was tossing pines into a U-Haul Thursday afternoon, crating them off to Sunset Park, one of the district's 11 drop-off sites for recycling trees.

The trees are then taken to the demonstration gardens on West Alta Drive near Valley View Boulevard, where they are turned into mulch. The recycling began Thursday with a pile of about 300 trees.

"I haven't heard how the lots are doing this year, but if this is any indication, it's a pretty big year," said Jesse Davis, spokesman for the district, as trunks and branches passed noisily through one end of a machine that looked like a huge meat grinder, leaving chips on the ground at the other end and the smell of the mountains in the air.

For Gina Kamai, assistant store manager at Paddock Pools on Stephanie Street, which sells Christmas decorations three months a year, more unsold trees at the lots around town meant higher sales in artificial trees at her store -- 1,500 had been sold this season through Thursday, she said.

"We've sold a lot more than last year," she said.

A drought in Oregon meant that the live trees this year were drier, which prompted many people to consider the artificial ones, Kamai said.

But the store also reduced prices earlier this year, leaving the trees on sale for most of the season, which stretches from November to January. The artificial trees regularly sell for $179 to $1,599, but most were 50 percent off from the weekend before Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve and 60 percent off thereafter.

Whether it was the economy, a drought in Oregon or a combination of the two, a lot of trees were outside and unsold come Dec. 25, which means there may be a lot more mulch down at the water district's gardens this year than was provided by the 5,000 trees donated last year.

The mulch helps keep weeds down and the soil moist at the gardens, which promote efficient use of water in landscaping, Mills said. Christmas trees are acidic and Las Vegas soils are alkaline, or basic, so the two make a great match.

"It makes for healthier soil and healthier plants," the horticulturalist said.

At the same time it was unfortunate that a benefit to the environment might come at a cost to workers in the lots, he said.

"It was sad to see all those trees that didn't sell," Mills said.

Motceo, at the tree lot at Eastern and Windmill, shook his head before jumping into the U-Haul shortly before sundown, and reflected on the tree market.

"Meat's not down, pork's not down," he said. "But I'll tell you, I'm down.""