Every year of marriage is a milestone and an achievement that should be commemorated. Traditionally, each wedding anniversary was marked with a specific element or flower as a symbol of the stalwart effort and dedication necessary to sustain a marriage. While the list of anniversary gifts has evolved over the years, the idea has remained the same: to praise the happy couple and to celebrate with them, while wishing them many years of sustained happiness.

You can send this greetings card along with your tree gift!

We have taken a look at some of the suggested anniversary gifts and given them a sustainable and unique makeover. Here’s how to find the perfect tree gift for a first, fourth or fifth wedding anniversary gift.

First Anniversary: Paper

It can be argued that Shakespeare’s sonnets are the most romantic things ever to be put on paper, but since we’re not all poets and may not be a dab hand at penning sonnets or love letters, another way of making paper a romantic anniversary gift is in the form of a paper birch tree. Also called a silver birch, this tree is graceful and attractive with heart-shaped leaves. A silver birch tree gift would make a thoughtful wedding anniversary gift as it is symbolises love and fertility.

Our cute 4th Wedding Anniversary cards

Fourth Anniversary : Fruit or flowers

The words fruit and romance typically conjure up images of chocolate-dipped strawberries fed to lovers by candlelight, but strawberries are not the only romantic fruits! Fruits are good sources of natural sugars, they tend to be sweet, juicy and succulent and when it comes to romantic foods, they’re top banana. (See what we did there?) In terms of romance, cherries rank high on the list of foods to nibble with your sweetie. Beneath its glistening sheen is a fruit ripe with the necessary nutrients and organic chemicals for natural passion, making it one of the world’s favourite aphrodisiacs. Served up as a fourth wedding anniversary gift, a cherry tree is a thoughtful and unique gift for reigniting the passion and celebrating the last four fantastic years of your marriage.

Don't buy dead wood... Buy a tree!

Fifth Anniversary Gifts : Wood

Wood is prized for its durability and versatility—two traits that are essential for making a marriage last to its fifth year mark and beyond. Traditional fifth wedding anniversary gifts include wooden picture frames, serving spoons and decorative boxes, but we say, why kill a tree for its wood? A living tree gift would symbolise a fifth wedding anniversary perfectly! It conjures thoughts that the marriage is still alive and breathing, just like the tree, and that it needs attention and gentle looking after if it is to survive. Now, isn’t that a lovelier thought than a plain hunk of wood?

Everybody is different and every marriage is different, which is why celebrating your anniversary with a unique, thoughtful tree gift is so important. Say goodbye to boring, predictable gifts and say I love you with an inimitable, sustainable gift.

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Trees planted during spring will have more time to establish their roots, will be able to grow more and will be better equipped to cope during warmer weather. The types of trees that benefit most from a spring planting are those that have been container-grown or balled and burlapped trees.

For best results, trees should be planted before budbreak, although planting past budbreak my still yield beneficial results for some. It is worth noting, that any tree could technically be planted at any time of year so long as the proper techniques and care are administered.

If you’re thinking about getting out in the garden and getting some planting done, here’s a list of our favourite trees, bushes and plants that tend to bode well with a spring planting.

Japanese Flowering Cherry Tree

Cherry blossoms themselves are harbingers of spring. They usually signify a break in the relentless cold of winter and nod to longer days and warm nights.  By planting in spring you can ensure that the cherry tree’s delicate roots have time to strengthen ahead of those inevitable chillier days.

Dwarf Crab Apple

Characterized by small, bitterly pungent fruits, the crab apple tree is one of Britain’s native trees, and it performs well in climates with cold winters and heavy soil. These ‘jewels of the landscape’ can be planted any time of the year. Containerised crab apples should be planted any time after the last spring frost until a few weeks before the ground freezes. Bare root crab apple trees, however, should only be planted in spring.

Evergreens

Not just for Christmas, these hearty, deeply vibrant trees can be enjoyed year round and most bode well with a spring planting. Our Alaska Holly Tree is just one of many evergreens that can be delivered to your door. The Alaksa Holly’s glossy dark green leaves contrast nicely with its stark white flowers in spring and crimson berries in winter. Since it prefers moist soil, spring is an optimum time for planting. April showers don’t just bring May flowers; they also bring Christmas berries!

Wildflowers

Their vibrant mix of flowers produces a striking array of colour, enlivening any garden. Choose from two wildflower mixes—a Love in a Bag seed gift set bursting with red and pink flowers or a Sunshine in a Bag seed gift set filled with a variety of yellow flowers.

Oak trees

Robust and strong, the mighty oak tree is a staple of any stretch of English countryside. A tree with such an affinity for strength and endurance can certainly stand up to changeable spring weather. The oak is hardy and tolerant of all conditions and can be planted in spring.

Orange trees

The humble orange is the jack of all trades in the citrus family! Its juice is used to boost the immune system, or as a base for many cocktails. Its flesh can be candied or used in jams, chutneys and marmalades. In segments, the orange can add a festive touch to green salads and it can be spritzed over chicken or baked with cinnamon. Extremely versatile and one of the most popular fruits, it can withstand being planted in spring.

Olive trees

Popular in sparse, slightly arid Mediterranean climates, olive trees are surprisingly adaptable and perform well if planted in spring just after the last frost. A spring planting gives them ample time to acclimatise before the onslaught of cold weather.

Walnut trees

Walnut trees can be as big as oak trees and they do best areas of direct sun or minimal shading. Frost can damage walnut trees, so a spring planting well past the last expected frost would be optimal. Bare rooted walnut trees prefer a winter planting, but containerised walnut trees can thrive if planted in spring with a little attention and care.

Pear trees

Juicy yet with a semi-firm flesh and tough skin, pear trees yield fruit that is both hardy and delicate. With a range of varieties all yielding a slightly different taste, it’s hard for pear lovers to choose a favourite species. No matter the species, though, potted pear trees can be planted year round and most do particularly well in spring.

Grape vines

The lowly grape, giver of wine. Our Lakemont grapes yield a delicately juicy white grape that is ready for eating straight from the vine in September. It is hardy and durable, dormant in the winter, but thrives in spring and summer. Planting in spring will ensure it is ready to enter dormancy later in the year.

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While the thought of attending a wedding delights some, others begin to feel overwhelmed and anxious when it comes to purchasing the mandatory wedding gift. True, the wedding industry has evolved in such a way that the happy couple can send round a list of gifts with their wedding invites, but finding something on the list that hasn’t already been purchased by other guests can be quite tricky.

If you’re looking for an original and thoughtful wedding gift with an environmentally-friendly message, I have three words for you: buy a tree.  A tree gift is a sustainable, unique present that could grace the happy couple’s garden or be maintained indoors to provide an inviting, cosy feeling.

The best type of tree to give as a wedding gift would be a tree that could be moved and carried with the couple throughout their life. A potted tree, such as a cherry tree would be an excellent option. Trees that bear fruit or nuts would also make an ideal wedding gift as they could provide the newlyweds with home grown ingredients for desserts and mealtimes.

If you’re looking for a more thoughtful wedding gift idea, consider giving a tree that bears the same type of flowers as the bride’s bouquet. Cherry blossoms, roses and wildflowers are all popular components of bridal bouquets an would each make a lovely reminder of the bride’s bouquet and a charming wedding gift.

One of the main attractions of a good wedding gift is something that can be shared and enjoyed with the bride and groom, and while they’re both likely to have a need for a toaster, it doesn’t make for an exciting wedding gift. Give them the option of enlivening their breakfasts with fresh fruit picked from their own tree. We can help you purchase orange and apricot trees and blackberry, blueberry or raspberry plants. A bay tree could be incorporated at other mealtimes—its leaves are often used in cooking to add depth and dimension to soups and stews.

When giving a wedding gift, it is important to purchase a gift that you would feel confident giving. If you know the bride and groom well, you should be able to confidently purchase a tree that you are certain they will love. But, what if you have been invited to a wedding of someone you do not know very well?

If you are only a casual acquaintance, you may want to keep your gift giving basic but classy. Buying a tree could help you achieve this. Everyone likes plants in the house—they provide more oxygen and give them home a cosy feel. Trees that do this well and that would suit being displayed in the home include lemon, lime and orange trees.

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Tree2mydoor can reveal that sales for Valentine’s Day gifts have dropped by over 50% in the last 4 years with the average order value dropping significantly too. This trend is supported by industry statistics that predict that the

Mothers Day Gifts

value of Valentine’s Day gifts will continue to drop off whilst the value of Mother’s Day gifts will actually increase.

We are seeing that many more of our customers will buy Mother’s Day gifts and will buy nothing at all for Valentine’s Day. Romance isn’t dead though as we still get a load of entries to our annual Valentine’s Day poetry competition. It appears that more and more people in the UK are opting to send a Valentine’s card and spending on yummy food for a romantic night in.

Both the value and the volume of Mother’s Day gifts have steadily increased by over 60% in the last 4 years and Mother’s Day or Mothering Sunday as it is traditionally known is expected to become Tree2mydoor’s biggest gifting occasion in 2012.

We anticipate to send more tree gifts for Mother’s Day presents this year than we did for Christmas 2011. It is evident that trees make special Mother’s Day gifts during our economic downturn because they carry special meaning to both the gift sender and mums all over the country and of course they will last for many years into the future.

Tree2mydoor’s Mother’s Day gifts range has grown over the years too and now offers a wide selection of lovely trees and plants available to be delivered just in time for Mother’s Day. Our My Mum Rose Bush is a really popular flowering gift for Mother’s Day as are our fruit tree gifts.

Visit our Mother’s Day gifts page now to send a tree for Mother’s Day.

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This is Kayleigh’s winning Valentines poem:

Matthew you are my Valentine as you have been for 13 years,
To think how on earth we’ve managed it reduces me to tears,
I met you when I was 14, I thought I was a lucky girl,
Now i’m almost 27 and you still have me in a whirl.
We’ve done a lot together, been to paradise and back,
How on earth you’ve put up with my PMT, I take off my hat!
We have a baby daughter and another one on the way,
I know we’ll all be together forever and a day.

Kayleigh Sheppard

Congratulations Kayleigh – Your prize will be send to you within the next 7 days!

Have a look at the other entries into the 2012 Valentines Poetry Competition.

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The Tree2mydoor Valentines Day Poetry Competition

Good news, The annual Tree2mydoor Valentines Day Poetry competition is back once again so hope you are all ready with your wit and wisdom to try and write a wonderful Valentines poem to be entered for a chance to win £100 Tree2mydoor gift voucher.

Tree2mydoor Valentines Competition at a glance:  All you have to do is write your very own Valentines poem for your Valentine and send it to us. We publish all the submissions on our website and pick our very favourite to win £100 in Tree2mydoor gift vouchers. Woooop. And what’s more, there great runner up prizes up for grabs also.

What type of Valentines Poetry?

If you are looking for a little inspiration, then why not check out some previous valentines poetry entries from last year to whet your appetite. We are sure it will help you get in the right mood for penning a valentines day classic and bag you £100 in Tree Gift vouchers in the process. Just remember your Valentines Day poem can be soppy, romantic, funny or silly, whatever floats your boat.

Who can enter?

The 2012 Valentines Poems Competition is open for entries now, so you can get scribbling or typing as soon as possible. Please note that the competition is only open to residents of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Entrants from other countries can still have their poems published on our website, but will not eligible to win a prize in the competition. This is because we only currently send out trees to the UK and Republic of Ireland.

How to enter the Valentines Day Poetry Comp

You can enter our 2012 Valentines Day poetry competition by typing up your own poem and e-mailing it to us or by making your own poetry video and sending it to us via our Grow Your Love Youtube channel.

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Roses for sale at Tree2mydoor.

Pruning roses is an essential task if you want to make sure your roses do really well the following season. Read on and find out about pruning roses especially if you have one of our fantastic rose bushes.

Why prune roses?

Pruning helps to speed up the growth of young healthy shoots, by removing the older weaker ones. Pruning roses is also essential if you want to maintain an attractive shape to your rose bush and sometimes if you just leave your rose bush to grow it can get a bit top heavy in places and be susceptible to wind damage and so on. You also should know that if you don’t prune, your rose flowers will grow on the new shoots and so get higher and higher every year. So there are plenty of good reasons to get those pruning shears out and do a job on your roses.

Here’s what you will need.

Remember to wear gardening gloves when pruning roses.

Pruning roses isn’t difficult so you won’t need lots of equipment. All you need is:

· Good Secateurs, sharp ones really make your job a lot easier and cleaner.

· Some gardening gloves; to protect you from the thorns when you are holding those roses back.

· A good gardening sack or similar to carry away the left over branches.

When to prune ?

Mid-winter is the best time to prune your rose bushes. They will dormant at the moment, so it is great to get in there and do a bit of pruning before new growth starts occurring. Early spring is also a time when you can prune, at this time the rose bushes will still be dormant or at least semi dormant.

How to prune?

Trim the roses slightly above the bud.

· You can afford to be fairly harsh when pruning. Remove all unproductive growth to between 8-10 inches in height (or around knee height). Keep taking a step back and looking at your rose bush so you can keep an attractive shape.

· When cutting, make sure you make a clean (where the sharp secatuers come in) cut about a quarter of an inch above an outward facing bud. Be careful not to cut to close or this will dry out the stem.

· If there are any dead shoots or ones that look very thin and weedy it is a good idea to trim these right back, because it will encourage lots of strong and healthy new growth.

· When you are done you should be left with a small rose bush with all stems facing outward, with an open centre.

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Lime Trees; great for cocktails and they make great gifts too.

Hello everyone, hope the new year is treating you well and you are not getting too down with the cold weather and dark days. Hopefully you checked out our blog post on gifts to end January blues and got some good ideas on perky tree gifts to cheer everyone up.

Anyway now’s time for a look at our favourite tree gift for this month: January.

Lime Tree Gift:

The lime tree is a fabulous tree, part of our citrus tree range and a firm favourite with us at Tree2mydoor and customers also.

Limes are some of our favourite trees here at tree2mydoor, because as with other citrus trees like the Lemon tree and the Orange tree, because they fruit so frequently. So for example, even in the middle of winter, citrus trees can fruit and are boxed and sent out with fruit already on them. This makes them ideal gifts for really special occasions, like as anniversary gifts or birthday presents or even just to send to a lime loving friend.

One of the other benefits to having your own fab lime tree is that you get to enjoy the fruit it produces right from the tree. So whether you are a cocktail fan, looking for fresh lime for your gin and tonic or an oriental foodie enthusiast searching for some zest for one of your special creations, a lime tree would be an excellent gift to send or receive.

Care advice for Lime trees:

Lime trees, as with all our other citruses, are classed as ‘indoor plants or trees’, however this doesn’t mean they are best kept directly inside the house, but rather in a porch, airy hallway or in a conservatory. Citruses don’t like to be in very hot places, like nest to radiators for example.

Citrus trees also prefer to dry out totally before being watered. If they are watered continually the roots get damp and can rot, so it’s best to keep and eye on them.

Citrus feed can really help your plant grow. We have winter citrus feed and summer Citrus feed available especially formulated to help your tree develop.

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Blue Monday is known as the saddest day of the entire year and usually falls on the 3rd Monday in January (this year it will be on ^16th of January). Was the 16th of January really the saddest day of the year, what do you guys think?

Anyway, January definitely can be a bit of a slog some years definitely, so in light of this we have come up with some Blue Monday busting natural gift ideas for this month.

Top ways to beat the January blues by sending wonderful natural gifts.

Love in a bag: get rid of someone’s January blues by letting them know how much you love them and what better way than send one of our fantastic ‘Love in a Bag’ gift bags? Our ‘Love in a Bag’ wildflower seed gifts contain a lovely mix of red wildflower seeds that can be sown and then enjoyed year upon year, a great alternative to cut flowers and a wonderful way to remind someone of a love you share.

Send some love with our 'Love in a Bag' seed gifts

Sunshine in a bag: Spread some sunshine and with our fantastic ‘sunshine in a bag’ seed gift. Like the ‘Love in a bag’ our sunshine gifts can be sown and will come back year on year, a great alternative to sending cut flowers and a more eco-friendly one too. Our sunshine seed bags give you lovely golden/yellow colouring.

Citrus Trees: Citrus trees are just fantastic! They fruit up to four times per year (in December/Jan too), have a gorgeous smell to them and are great in cooking/cocktails. The citrus fruits also have lots of lovely Vit C to help with colds in January.

Garden fruit trees: Most fruit trees are dormant at the moment, so it’s a perfect time for them to be planted out in the garden, ready to bring years and years of fruit enjoyment. A lovely idea to send as a gift to cheer someone up this January.

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January is always a time when people are thinking about getting on with New Year’s resolutions and perhaps cleansing the body after too much Christmas excess.  Since health is a thing on the tip of nearly everyone’s tongue at this time of year we thought it would be a nice idea to do a light-hearted blog based on natural cold and flue remedies to combat some of the common January ailments.

Remedies for colds and flu’s

Eurgh… nothing worse than a cold in January, you’ve made it through Christmas and New Years at least, but still none could be more annoying. Everyone knows that oranges contain loads of vitamin C but so do all citrus fruits.

Get yourself some vitamins to fight the colds and flu’s hanging around at this time of year. Our Lemon trees, Orange trees and Lime trees grow delicious fruits and are all great and at this time of year should still be fruiting.

Remedies for coughs and tickles

Scratchy, annoying and usually the first signs of getting a cold, soothe your tender throat by making yourself a wonderful hot honey and lemon and ginger drink.

Lovely hot cup of organic honey and lemon to soothe your cough this January

How to make a soothing honey and lemon drink for a cough:

• Boil up a cup amount of water
• Add in a desert spoon of organic honey
• Cut 2-3 slices of a lemon, picked straight from your own lemon tree
• Add 2-3 thin slices of root ginger
• Stir well and start sipping!

Help your headaches

Sort out your headaches with Bay Leaf Tea. Apparently Bay leaves have certain properties in them that have made them useful as a natural remedy for headaches for thousands of years.

How to make Bay leaf tea:

• Pick 8-10 bay leaves from your bay tree
• Add them to a pan of water and bring to the boil
• Once the water turns a light pinkish colour it is ready
• Add sugar to taste if you wish
• Pour the water through a sieve into a cup
• Start sipping and loose that headache.

Alternatively you can use dried bay leaves in a strainer to make a headache remedy.

If you are interested, check out our bay trees and grow your own bay leaves.

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