Christmas trees in short supply in Corona del Mar, Newport

Corona del Mar resident Jennifer Cooper couldn’t believe her eyes when she and her family made their traditional trip to the Gallo’s Christmas tree lot Sunday.

“We all piled in the car, and the lot was fenced with all the trees piled up behind it,” she said. “I was completely shocked. We’d been just going to Gallo’s every year. It’s our tradition.”

The Gallo’s lot opened just after Thanksgiving and closed on Dec. 12, said Bridget Morahan, who works at the adjacent deli.

“They sold out so fast,” she said. “There are some small trees left, but that’s all we have.”

To buy one, she said, you need to pick one out from the lot and pay at the deli. The leftover trees are $10 each.

The family went to a tree lot at the Dunes Waterfront Resort, but the trees there were too tall, Cooper said.

Finally, they found a tree at Armstrong Garden Center in Newport Beach.

“They literally had six trees left,” she said. “They’d been picked through. At some lots, the trees were horrendous, like misfit toys. It was really weird. You hear about this kind of thing two days before Christmas, but I didn’t think we were that late.”

The Christmas tree shortage of 2014 surprised other CdM residents as well, who described going to Huntington Beach for trees or opting for a different variety than usual because selections were so limited.

Roger’s Gardens still has about 50 trees left, said nursery manager Rex Yarwood, including a few 6-foot firs at $69.99 each.

Yarwood said he ordered 25% more trees this year than last, and they arrived Nov. 19 and immediately began to sell.

“It was a very brisk season, and it started early,” he said. “They moved a lot faster this year.”

Most trees sold the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend.

“We received two full semi-trucks full of trees,” Yarwood said.

Roger’s Gardens trees come from a family farm in Washington state, he said, where they were unaffected by California’s drought.

He said there wasn’t a real tree shortage, but there are fewer tree lots in the area than in other years, and he’d heard reports that some big-lot stores’ inventories of trees were worse this year.

“We have about 50 left,” Yarwood said. “And that’s kind of where we want to be. We quickly turn around, and at this point next week, we’re receiving roses and have to make room for them.”

Ron Vanderhoff, general manager and vice president at Roger’s Gardens, said Christmas tree sales were up by double digits this year, and noted the trees were the “best quality we have seen in years.”

“One caveat that was challenging this year had to do with trucking and transportation,” he said in an email. “There was a serious shortage of trucks hauling trees southward. Many local lots and retailers may have had a difficult time getting trees for that reason, or at least on the dates when they wanted them. Again, Roger’s Gardens did not have this problem, but we were very aware of the issue.”

This story initially appeared on Corona del May Today.