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Getting the most Beautiful Christmas Tree

This year, the First Advent was greeted with a snow-covered land, which brightens up the winter solstice time and fills it with festive moods. An important part of this season is a green Christmas tree that has grown in a forest or in a pot. This year, too, people in Latvia have the opportunity to go to the forests managed by JSC “Latvia’s State Forests” (LVM) and bring home their Christmas tree, taking care of where, how and what tree to cut in order to preserve the forest of the future.

A fir-tree may be felled free of charge only in the forests managed by LVM. LVM forest boundaries may be identified by the yellow signs on the roadside; the entire boundary is marked with yellow stripes on tree trunks. Also plates with an inscription AS “Latvijas valsts meži” (JSC “Latvia's State Forests”) on the intersections of firebreaks confirm that you are in a state forest. The LVM GEO Mobile mobile app and www.mammadabakarte.lv can help you navigate in the forest, with the areas managed by LVM marked in dark green.

Fir-trees that may be cut for Christmas grow along roads and around ditches, on firebreaks, under power lines or beneath large trees in mature forests, but certainly not in young stands or young mixed forests, since there trees have been specially planted and tended to grow a future forest.

It is forbidden to cut trees in public nature parks and in specially protected nature territories marked with an oak-tree image on a green background. Also, be careful not to accidentally get into forests of other owners.

For more information about where and how to look for a Christmas tree and how to store it properly, read the LVM booklet:

A spruce grown in a pot can afterwards be planted in your backyard garden

More and more often, the place where the family gathers at home during the Christmas time is decorated with a Christmas tree growing in a pot. When stored properly, it can be planted into a backyard garden in spring. In the coming years, all you have to do is get new, hand-made natural decorations, and there will be no other just as beautiful tree anywhere else in the whole wide world.

In “LVM Sēklas un stādi” (LVM Seeds and Plants) nurseries there is a wide range of fir-trees in pots: a small pyramid, a nest, a tree with a peculiar sparse crown, with a plenty of space for ornaments or, for example, a Christmas tree with a dense crown, which may be decorated with finer and smaller ornaments.

The range of Christmas trees is expanding also at the Embassy of Latvia’s State Forests in Riga, 1 Vaiņodes Street. Anyone interested can choose eco-balls for Christmas trees, Advent wreaths and many other decorations made in LVM nurseries and Kalsnava Arboretum, which will allow you to see and feel the beauty and wonder of nature. The Embassy of Latvia's State Forests is open on working days from 9 to 18, and on Saturdays from 9 to 15.