Christmas on the beach

Just like the swallows returning to Capistrano every year, we can count on seeing trucks filled with sad old used Christmas trees prowling the neighborhoods every year.  Ah, those trees, so resplendent in December and so lugubrious in January, piled up down by the mailbox and the electric pole, waiting for the county truck to haul them off.

I don't know what our county does with old discarded Christmas trees, but here's a good use for them along the New Jersey shore: the beach town of Brigantine uses them to replenish their sand dunes. It's a useful alternative to having the US Army Corps of Engineers move sand around to rebuild the sandhills.

There are a few towns in Jersey where this is done. I haven't heard of it happening here in Maryland, but as John W. Doring, superintendent of public works for Brigantine, says, "We help create our dunes, but they’re created by nature.”

The plan is, the town wrangles 2,000 to 3,000 old Christmas trees, and public works employees lay them down parallel to the ocean, single file, tip to trunk at the base of the dune.

“It helps catch the sand the way a beach fence does,” Doring said. “The sand blows up, it covers the trees and then the dune starts. Once it’s buried, the tree breaks down and it feeds the dune grass.”

By the numbers: they pile them up 10-15' high, three dunes per block, 60-70 trees per dune.

There's just one hitch: you have to remove all the lights and tinsel and ornaments like the one that says Baby's First Christmas.

Last year, they replenished about eight blocks worth of dunes. They will eventually need to be replaced, but there is no foreseeable shortage of Christmas trees ahead, so this should help the beach stay beachy!