With the holidays just around the corner, Echter’s Garden Center in Arvada is once again prepping for its annual Christmas tree giveaway.
“If you don’t have a tree up I guess… is it really Christmas?” Renae Pribyl said.
Pribyl works part-time for the company, and when December hits she says they start to feel more like Santa’s helpers.
“We should’ve put on our Santa hats,” she laughed.
Six years ago, the locally owned business found themselves with an abundance of trees just days away from Christmas.
“It was just killing me that all these trees were going to get thrown away so I had this idea that let’s donate them to families who can’t afford them,” Julie Echter said.
Echter who is the vice president of the company says they’ve held the event every year since and quickly learned the tree by itself was not always enough.
Today the staff builds the stands to hold those trees up and collects and repurposes ornaments and lights to make sure each of the Frazier firs can really shine.