Planting at Easter:

Why the Timing Matters and What to Expect on the Day

Easter feels like spring. The days are longer, the hedgerows are starting to fill out, and if you've got children, the school holidays have a different energy to February half term. So it might seem like an odd time to be planting Christmas trees.

But Easter sits at a really specific point in the growing calendar — and that's exactly why Grow With Me runs now.

Why Easter is the last chance to plant

Christmas trees need to go in while they're still dormant. Dormancy is the period when a tree's energy is held below ground, focused on root development rather than producing new growth above the surface. It's not a resting state so much as a building state — the groundwork for everything that comes later is being laid underground now.

Once the growing season properly gets underway, that window closes. A tree coming out of dormancy needs its energy for the growth it's already committed to. Planting at that point disrupts the process rather than supporting it.

The Easter holidays fall right at the end of the dormant period. Plant now and your tree gets the same strong, settled start as a tree planted in the depths of winter. Leave it much later and you're waiting until next year.

That's the practical reason for the timing. It's not about the season feeling right — it's about the biology of the tree.

What actually happens on the day

Visits last around one and a half hours and the whole thing moves at a pace that works for small children — which is to say, unhurried, with plenty of room for questions and detours.

You start in the workshop, where the children make a wooden name plaque for their tree. Then you choose your tree, load it into the wheelbarrow, and head up to the field together.

The planting itself is proper hands-on work. You dig the hole, place the roots, cover the tree, and firm the soil. The children do as much of this as they want to — and most of them want to do quite a lot of it. Once the tree is in and the plaque is in the ground, that's when we take the keepsake picture.

After that, you head down to the hut by the pond for refreshments. It's a good natural pause — a chance to warm up, have a drink, and let the children process what they've just done.

Then it's the animals. This varies depending on what's on the farm at the time, but during February half term we visited Dodger the sheep for fusses, went to see the chickens, picked one up and collected eggs, and then fed a bottle lamb. The children who met that lamb are still talking about it, if the messages we've had are anything to go by.

The visit ends at the Splash Stream — a shallow stream that runs through the yard under a willow tree. The children can wade in, and it turns out to be a fairly effective welly boot cleaning station too.

What comes next

The tree stays on the smallholding and grows here. You'll hear from us each year when the seasonal window opens — a different visit, a different husbandry task, another chance to see how much has changed. Year four is the harvest.

Each year is optional and booked separately. You're not committing to anything beyond this first visit. But if you want to know more about how the four-year journey works before you book, that's all on the Grow With Me page.

Bookings are now open for the Easter window, and the dates are all online now.