If you were waiting to get a Christmas tree, you may have waited too long.
Nurseries across the city are reporting they are sold out of fresh trees, or only have a handful left.
“We’ve got one — kind of a little, goofy looking,” said Susan Stubbe of Jensen’s Nursery Monday morning.
“We do have a couple that we’ve kind of kept ’til we get through our deliveries and make sure we haven’t forgotten to take a tree, you know, just that contingency. But other than that, there’s not a lot.”
Read more:
‘People just want to feel normal’: Christmas trees selling like crazy in Winnipeg
On social media, numerous greenhouses and nurseries reported they sold out this weekend.
“We are sold out of Christmas trees for the 2020 season,” Ron Paul Garden Centre wrote on social media Saturday.
“We have never sold out of trees this early in December and in spite of our best efforts to get more we were unsuccessful — a continent-wide shortfall this year.”
Stubbe confirmed that trees were already scarce to begin with.
“When we originally ordered back in August, they were all capping us at what we ordered last year other than a few. So we you know, we added 30, 40 to our repertoire of trees and we were looking at hoping to get more in the season and it just isn’t possible.”
The reasons range from drought, recession in the U.S. a decade ago, and wildfires, said Stubbe.
“Some of our loyal customers that have been with us for the 20 years we’ve been doing this didn’t get their tree this year, which I feel really bad about,” she said.
Jenson’s Nursery sold about 1,000 trees this year, said Stubbe, and normally by this week, there are about 400 left to sell.
People are buying because they’re looking for a little bit of hope, she added.
People are saying, “I want it now because I’m home and I need something nice to look at and to build my spirits up,” she said.