Anne Elliott and her Christmas trees

Anne Elliott has just begun her busiest time of year. Indeed over the next month everyone and their uncle will be wanting what she has to offer. Now aged 78 she has been in the business for nearly 50 years and as I have been heading her way every December for over half of that time, I can vouch for the fact that her Norway Spruce never fails to disappoint. For Anne grows and sells Christmas trees.

I am very particular about my tree. It’s a trait I inherited from my father who would spend hours the weekend before Christmas choosing what he considered to be the perfect shape and height for the tall ceilings of my childhood home. We children would grow tired from holding tree after tree upright, while he stood at a distance humming and hawing in indecision.  Discarded as being too bushy, too spindly, too misshapen, at last he would settle on an absolute beauty, and it would be tied on to the roof rack, brought back to the house and then left outside in the garden until Christmas Eve. And only then, after he had returned from work and it was already dark, would the tree be brought inside. Round it we would all gather to decorate it, with shiny baubles, tinsel and, in those days, real candles in clip-on brass holders. There was one handsome glass swan that we all fought over to place in position, the curve of its regal silvery neck resplendent against the dark green of the boughs. 

So I was delighted when Anne invited me to join her last week for a wander around her Marsh Baldon farm before she opens to the public and the hoards descend. Just outside Oxford at the end of a wooded muddy track, a stone’s throw from the busy main road to Wallingford, it’s here that she has spent all year tending to her 12,000 or so trees. Pruning, weeding, planting, bud rubbing – a procedure she informs me by which she must remove the top bud in a cluster to ensure the ultimate slender shape for which she strives. And now she is checking that each and every one, from the tiniest to the towering twenty five footer is looking at its best and ready for show. Occasionally stooping to trim the odd wayward branch, she proudly presents her flock – from my favourite, the traditional Norway Spruce with its elegant slim needles and unmistakable festive fragrance, to the sturdy Nordmann Firs; from the ethereal blueish-grey of the Nobles to the silvery shades of the Blue Spruce. And as we go she tells me her story.

“My grandfather, Charles Sheard, started the family farm. He was an agricultural worker and one day while he was out scything in the field he dreamed up the idea of turning a willow tree into baskets. As it happened there was a large local crop of blackcurrants that year and he filled the baskets with them. And then he took them up to Covent Garden market in London and it was a great success. So he carried on for a few years and from that he was able to buy himself his own piece of land, in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell where I still have a workshop. 

He was a bit of a character by all accounts, my grandfather. He used to hold his trousers up with a piece of string even when he was wealthy. It was all cherry orchards at that time and that’s what my dad Frank and his brother Charles took over. In the early days, Dad and Uncle Charlie kept milking cows and Mum would tell us stories of how Buttercup 1, Buttercup 2, Daisy and Tulip had been milked by hand sitting on 3-legged stools and the milk delivered around the village.  My father and uncle were big fruit farmers, providing fruit for Oxford and Swindon. Mum and her sister-in-law, my Auntie Joan, would deliver strawberries to local hotels like Shillingford Bridge Hotel as well as having a stall at Henley Regatta. They would be up to 4am picking and weighing the strawberries with the help of many lovely local ladies. Later, they started what was to be one of the first ever farm shops in this area and Mum could be seen selling cherries under a tarpaulin in the corner of the orchard. This was later to become Sheard’s Farm Shop, and Garden Centre, now Root One. Mum lived to be 99 years old and was still doing the paperwork, wages and books for the business into her 80’s. There’s a Joan Sheard Cup (named after my auntie who was very good at growing vegetables) still awarded at Brightwell’s annual flower and produce show.

My brother and I grew up with it all. From the age of 8, I was out picking plums and weeding the carrots and beetroots. I’m an outdoor person, but my love in life is flowers. When I was 16, I trained as a florist and worked for Auntie Kitty in the Covered Market in Oxford as it was in those days. And then I set up the garden centre. That’s when I started selling Christmas trees. Back then it was only Spruce, and they used to lose their needles and I hated that so I found this lovely gentleman called Mr Smith who would get the trees up by the roots for me so that every Christmas tree I sold had roots.  And then we started to grow them ourselves. There are still some of those originals grown in Brightwell. They are huge.

This piece of land we bought to grow potatoes before we started growing the trees here. It’s not easy. The first few years it snowed, and people couldn’t get up the lane. Last year a tree fell down and the electricity was cut off on our busiest day. But my aim is to grow the perfect tree. I’m obsessed with it.  Occasionally you come across one that does it on its own and that’s an absolute delight. But normally you have to help them along. We got rated ‘excellent’ from the British Christmas Tree Association for our spruces so that is very satisfying.”

And so it is I take my leave, and she heads off to make ready. For there is foliage to gather and ribbons to be prepared for wreath making. As well as meeting with the team who come in to assist her for this her short window of trading. 

“We have the lads from next door help with the trees up to Christmas – they are very strong because they have been used to assembling fairground equipment. They are absolutely lovely boys. And then we have Peter and a lovely new lady. There’s some Polish people and Amanda of course who sells in the shop.”

I am pleased to say that Anne like me only ever bedecks her living room with a Norway Spruce, with its rich, nostalgic scent of pine sweet woods. And for that I will need to return in a few weeks to ensure its longevity. I like to bring it indoors to decorate a little before Christmas Eve, but just a few days. A ritual to which I look forward to fondly, first stringing up warm white lights, then gold beads festooned from top to bottom, followed by an assortment of ornaments I have collected over the years; a choir of angels always suspended around the crown of the tree, a box of beautiful glass baubles bought from Bohemia, the traditional heartland of their production, so fragile they are hung high up to avoid being broken. I have amongst my many delights a knitted snowman and three velvet crowned kings, a multitude of bright sequinned birds with long tail feathers, tin soldiers, stripey stockings and small exotic sacks of silver trinkets and jewels. And there they will sit like old friends while we raise a glass to Anne and the conifer that she raised with such care and passion. I like to think the tree will be pleased with its new festive finery. And then the magic of Christmas can begin.

Main photo: Anne with one of the larger trees. This one destined for the village of Kennington.

Anne Elliott’s trees can be found at https://highfieldtrees.co.uk

Anne farms around eight acres with trees, which head off amongst other places to Dorchester Abbey and St Anthony’s College, Oxford.

The Noble Fir. Its foliage can be used all year around.

The old fashioned Norway Spruce

This Blue Spruce is seventeen years old.

The sturdy Nordmann Fir has become the most popular Christmas tree as its needles do not drop.

Anne’s singing reindeer waiting to be brought out for the season to entertain customers.

This photograph of Anne’s grandfather Charles Sheard with his five children was taken around 1910. Anne’s father Frank is the smallest boy in the picture. The older boy is Anne’s Uncle Charlie who worked with him on the farm in Brightwell where this was taken. The large walnut tree (now felled) gave its name to the house, ‘Walnuts’ in which they lived. Charlie’s son John, Anne’s cousin, still lives in Mackney, where the remains of the old orchards can be found. The family’s presence in the village can be traced back to the 18th century.

The next generation. Anne’s dad Frank on the farm with her brother Paul.

My Christmas tree from last year.

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