Tayside Forestry.
Tayside Forestry is one of the UK’s largest Christmas tree growers and has been producing Christmas trees in the heart of the Angus countryside for nearly 60 years. We currently produce almost 80,000 Christmas trees each year, on 500 acres of prime land. Our clients include large retail businesses, wholesalers and garden centres and we also sell directly to the public from the farm.
Tayside Forestry Firewood are Wood assured and have our WS209 certification number. We pride ourselves on selling kiln dried firewood, with low moisture content at a great price. As a long established family business we have built our reputation on supplying a quality product. Our firewood and kindling is sourced from sustainable local woodlands within a fifty mile radius and we can deliver direct to your door anywhere in the UK.
Not just Christmas Trees … Simple, honest, fresh food. Good for the soul. We are now spreading the joy all year round with the Pine Cone Café and gift shop open daily from 10am till 5pm. There are so many yummy reasons to visit!
Our History
Since our beginnings almost sixty years ago on a little nine acre small holding in Glenshee, Tayside Forestry has been on quite a journey.
It really started with my father Gordon Hughes looking to make some extra money for Christmas. At that time no one grew Christmas trees on a plantation – they were all taken from forestry thinnings. My father however, had the idea to plant some Christmas trees. Armed with a small planting spade and a bag of trees over his shoulder, he planted up a small frost pocket of land with five hundred Norway spruce.
Despite the harsh growing conditions, the trees did well. He was able to harvest them with his bushman saw, bundle then up with bailer twine and sell them through the florist RS Hill in Blairgowrie and Turriff’s in Broughty Ferry. As the demand for ‘farm fresh’ trees grew, so did the business and in the mid-seventies we had a record harvest of 4000 trees and celebrated with a family holiday to America!
The business moved to the current site at Templeton Farm nearly ten years ago and in that time we have doubled our output to almost 80,000 trees per year with nearly 500 acres in planted production. In the early years a piece of string for lining out the trees was about as far as technology went! Today we are planting in excess of 120,000 trees each year and the string has been replaced with GPS systems and top of the range harvesting equipment. This phenomenal growth now sees the business unrecognisable from its small beginnings back in Glenshee. The one thing though that has remained firm over the years is that we are always striving to improve and ensure that our customers get superb well-presented trees.