Christmas tree farmers in western North Carolina are still rebuilding from last year’s devastating Hurricane Helene, but growers are optimistic about business and the overall strength of their industry in the region.

“There’s still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, but we’re in much better shape than we were this time last year … sales are good,” Kevin Gray, owner of Hickory Creek Farm Christmas Trees in Greensboro, said earlier this month, while the buying season was in full swing.

North Carolina is the nation’s second-largest Christmas tree producer, harvesting about 4m trees, mainly Fraser firs, annually, most grown in the western part of the state. As people all over the nation thrill to the twinkling lights and accumulating gifts under the boughs this festive season, few who buy a real tree may spare a thought for where it came from.

In October, 2024, Helene tore through the region, killing at least 95 people and causing widespread damage to homes, farms, roads, land and infrastructure. Officials estimated that the storm, at one stage a category 4, caused about $125m in losses of ornamental nurseries and Christmas trees alone.

A year later, while full recovery for some farms is still distant, many growers said their sales before the holidays were lively.

At Avery Farms, a 200-year-old family operation in Avery county, Helene ripped out about 80,000 of their Christmas trees, wrecked fields, equipment and buildings, and destroyed the home of manager Graham Avery’s parents.

That fall, the family sold what they could to the customers: a limited number of trees, wreaths, boughs and improvised tabletop trees fashioned from salvaged tops.

This year has been focused on rebuilding. Avery’s parents’ home was rebuilt with help from “lots of people donating their time” and they moved back in just a month ago. The family bulldozed damaged fields, fertilized the soil and planted about 20,000 trees this spring, a long-term project to regain pre-Helene output, as Christmas trees take from six to 12 years to mature.

“It’s going to be a while, but that’s the whole game that we play doing Christmas trees. It’s a very long-term investment,” Avery said. “We are set up to do it, and we will continue to do it.”

Even with significantly reduced inventory, Avery said, this season’s sales have been “very, very good” and the farm has doubled its wreath output and is shipping them nationwide.

“With what inventory we do have, we’ve had no issue selling,” Avery said.

Jennifer Greene, executive director of the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, said the industry remained strong despite the devastation to some growers.

The 2025 growing season also offered some relief. “We had a great spring with April rainfall,” she said, noting the trees “have actually had a great growing season”.

“We’re in the middle of a great season, we’re happy to not have a hurricane and we’ve had good weather for harvest. So things are looking good,” she said.

Dee Clark, owner of Christmas Corner and C&G Nursery in Avery county, shared similar optimism, despite retail sales plummeting last year when a road washed out and remained closed until summer.

“Early indications look promising,” Clark, 63, said, earlier in December. He added that his son had developed social-marketing efforts to boost sales.

A third-generation grower, Clark said Helene destroyed much of his farm’s infrastructure and damaged roads and culverts, triggering landslides that cost about 1,000 trees and stripped vital nutrients from the soil.

Clark, who said the storm “almost put us out of business”, has focused on repairs, replanting and restoring the land. He expects it will take years to replace lost trees, and knows many growers face a similar, long climb. But, he said: “The Christmas tree industry in western North Carolina as a whole is probably the best shape it’s ever been in as far as the supply of trees right now.”

At Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm, owner Sam Cartner said he felt fortunate no lives or homes were lost in the flooding, but said landslides destroyed up to 10,000 trees.

“We probably won’t ever be able to plant those areas back, because the topsoil slid off,” he said. “We’ll have to find other areas to plant if we recover that number of trees.”

The Cartners worked quickly, and made enough repairs to have a “relatively normal harvest” last fall, he said, despite the major damage to roads, bridges and culverts on the property.

One of their trees was even selected last year to be displayed at the White House.

For many in the region, the Cartners’ White House tree became a symbol of resilience. Jamie Bookwalter, an extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recalled attending its send-off ceremony in Avery county.

“That Christmas tree represented a lot of people problem-solving,” she said, “which I think is what this area of the country is kind of known for: resiliency, problem-solving and self-reliance.”

Will Kohlway IV, a Christmas tree production extension specialist also at NC State, said the Cartners’ ability to harvest and deliver the tree, despite everything the region had dealt with, exemplified “the spirit of the mountains and also Christmas tree growers”.

They called the tree “Tremendous”, he said, because “it was really a tremendous effort”.

Bookwalter visited some of the hardest-hit farms immediately following the storm. “Helene was a terrible event, but farming in general is just becoming more difficult as temperatures become more unpredictable and we get wetter periods – the wetter periods are wetter, the drier periods are drier,” she said. “We’re all just kind of learning day by day.”

She said researchers are working to develop trees more resilient to the changing climate.

Kohlway said that the public’s support for the region’s growers and farms had been “humbling”.

“Buying a tree supports a North Carolina farmer,” he said. Even if purchased at a big-box store, the tree, Bookwalter added, “really represents probably a pretty small farmer”.