How Portland chooses its Christmas tree—and keeps it from falling over

A crane lifts this year’s Christmas tree from the flatbed truck as workers from the City of Portland, Keeley Crane and Shaw Brothers prepare to place the tree in Monument Square. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

How many lights does it take to decorate a 40-foot blue spruce tree?

Mark Reiland, the city’s arborist since 2023, said the towering tree in Portland’s Monument Square will be decorated with about 4,200 individual bulbs this year. Here are his answers to five more questions about how the city picks its tree each year.

This interview has been shortened for length.

City arborist Mark Reiland inspects an ash tree near the intersection of Spring and High streets in Portland in June. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

How is a tree chosen for Monument Square?

That’s why we traditionally made a nomination request. That’s coordinated between us here and the Parks Department and Portland Downtown and the Mayor’s Office. We asked private individuals to nominate conifers on their property that they would donate to the city as a Christmas tree. It usually starts at the end of September and the nominations are just beginning. This year we had about ten trees in total that would have qualified as a Christmas tree.

People come from all over southern Maine to watch the tree lighting and take part in the festivities. Therefore, we receive nominations from all cities throughout southern Maine. But last year, for a number of reasons, we really decided that we wanted to keep it in Portland and choose a tree in Portland. For one thing, transporting an entire tree is a surprising challenge. Things get really complicated once we get more than a few miles from Monument Square because we have to navigate an 18-wheeler with all sorts of tie-downs and the tree hanging out.

So of the 10 possible nominations this year, four came from Portland.

How was this tree selected from these submissions?

Aesthetics plays a big role here. This also includes the height of the tree. When the tree is standing before we harvest it, the finished height at Monument Square is about 10 feet lower than where it is growing. So there is a minimum height. We would like to have a reasonably large tree there.

We try to be ecologically sensitive and not unnecessarily harvest a large, mature tree. Of the four nominations, this one in particular caused some conflicts and problems due to its objectives. It was very narrow between two buildings. Regardless of whether we harvested it for the Christmas tree, it should be cut down anyway. That was a pretty crucial factor. At least in this way we get some additional uses and benefits from it.

How do you secure the tree?

The current anchoring system definitely came about through trial and error. The tree itself actually extends about three to five feet into the square. There’s a manhole cover and a hollow concrete pipe that the tree fits into, and then we use tons of wooden washers.

We also have four steel guy cables running at various locations on the building facades directly on Monument Square. One is temporarily anchored to the base of the monument for the holidays. One crosses Congress Street and is mounted on a building facade across the street. We anchored it in four directions and sunk it several meters deep into the square. This gives us pretty good resistance to wind throw, which is the main problem at this location.

I’ve heard rumors that the tree may be sparser than usual this year. They said the aesthetics of the tree are important. What did you like about this particular tree and its appearance that made you choose it?

We definitely want a tree that is tall enough. The lighting ceremony is full, so if we had a smaller, 15 or 20 foot tree it would be less spectacular. We’re looking for something bigger.

The aesthetic aspect is a small part of the equation. We’re really trying to build the green infrastructure and build on that in the city. So one of the key decision factors this year was that by selecting a tree that was going to be removed anyway, we limited in a global sense that we now only lose one mature tree, rather than potentially two. So that was a pretty big deciding factor.

This gives the forestry team a little more artistic freedom to do some different things with the lighting this year to mimic some of the other lighting we’ve done downtown. With a thicker canopy, it is usually not possible for us to wrap the entire tree to the top, as well as the more traditional Christmas tree canopy edge lighting. This year we’ll have a pretty healthy combination of both.

Do you put a tree in your home during the holidays and if so, do you have any special criteria as an arborist?

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly important to make sure that the tree is sustainably purchased. Personally, I don’t actually put one up because I don’t want to harvest one, but if you buy a locally grown Christmas tree from a farm that regularly replants, then it is an agricultural product. From an environmental perspective, there is no real problem other than limiting the number of fossil fuel miles associated with transportation. Buy local, be local I would say.

Copy the story link