Please DO NOT take your Christmas Trees to the National Trust at Formby near Southport

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Please note that we no longer recycle Christmas trees at Formby. A big thank you to everyone who has donated trees in the past to help with our conservation work.

We no longer accept Christmas trees for recycling at Formby as this particular work we were doing has now finished. However, below you can read more about how we used Christmas trees in the past to help protect Formy for the future.

In the past decade National Trust staff and hundreds of volunteers have dug in over 15,000 recycled Christmas trees to create fences across the sand dunes. These fences have been placed in areas where the naturally occurring Marram Grass has been lost due to trampling.

When the Marram grass is lost the sand dune becomes bare and this means that when the wind blows in from the sea the sand on the dune blows away and the dunes become flattened. This is a serious problem as not only does this mean that important sand dune habitat is lost but it also compromises the dunes as a natural sea defence for Formby.

The Christmas tree dune fences help to mitigate this damage by mimicking the action of the Marram grass, catching the sand blown on to the dunes from the beach and also dissipating the power of the wind as it blows across the surface of the dunes. Over time the trees become buried which helps to build up the dunes and they also help to partly stabilise the surface of the dunes which often allows the Marram grass to take hold again naturally.

Thank you to everyone who has donated Christmas trees in the past to make this work possible.

All real trees can be taken to any of the four Household Waste Recycling Centres in Sefton listed below, and put in the green waste skips, just ensure all the tinsel and decorations have been removed!

• Formby Household Waste Recycling Centre, Altcar Road, Formby L37 8DL
• Sefton Meadows Household Waste Recycling Centre, Sefton Lane, Maghull L31 8BX
• South Sefton Household Waste Recycling Centre, Irlam Road, Bootle L20 4AE
• Southport Household Waste Recycling Centre, Foul Lane, Southport PR9 7RG

Find out more about the ​Queenscourt Hospice Christmas tree collection service here