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TREE-MENDOUS PROJECT BY HIGHAM FERRERS TOURISM BRINGS JOY TO TOWN

 It is more than 20 years since Higham Ferrers Tourism came up with a bright idea to bring joy ─ and sparkle ─ to the town.

Their illuminated Christmas tree project to decorate the outside of houses and various business premises in the main roads runs for several weeks from late November unto early January.

But the planning starts months beforehand when the organisation’s treasurer Kevin Bird contacts local home and business owners to ask if they want a Christmas tree just as they did the previous year.

With the orders placed and the £20 cost paid, the 74 trees are ordered, ready for volunteers to place the lights on the branches.

But first, member Bert Jackson had the job of sorting out the lights and neatly lining them up ready to place on the trees.

“It is not an easy job placing the lights on all the trees and it takes many hours of hard, dedicated work,” said Carol Fitzgerald, the project co-ordinator.

For the past three years, real trees have replaced artificial trees. “We carried out a survey which supported our desire to go green and opt for real trees,” Carol recalled.

There was another new change in 2025 as for the first time, the Higham Ferrers Town Council generously helped fund the project, paying for the preparation of the trees – shaving the trunks – buying lights and paying for a contractor to position the trees around the town and then to remove them.

With the trees taken down, members and volunteers then reported for duty once again, this time to remove the lights.

Like last year, the committee signed up to the Cransley Hospice Community Christmas Tree recycling initiative and just after the lights were removed, their trees were loaded onto a recycling company van with the driver, Jonathan Lee and his helper Sara Devonald, taking them off for chipping, thereby supporting various local community projects.

Higham Ferrers Tourism made a donation to the hospice for the service, which is one of the hospice’s biggest fund-raising campaigns. The project raised £27,000, with 10% going to another charity, the Northants 4x4 Emergency Response Team, which helps the hospice. A total of 1,700 trees were recycled with Higham Ferrers tree surgeon Brett Gavin chipping 400 of them at a site in Wellingborough.

Higham Ferrers Tourism is the hospice’s biggest tree donor, the hospice’s fundraiser, Rebecca Patenall said. 

January 2026