Our Story
East London Trees is a community project run by Network-6, Spreading Kindness Through E11, and The Duke, raising money for local charities and community outreach programmes. We’re the alternative to the commercial Xmas tree operators. :)
We began selling Xmas trees Christmas in 2013 from The Duke pub garden, in all honesty to fill some time while rather dull, protracted development discussions were ongoing with the landlord over the investment required to bring some love back to a much forgotten run down boozer at the back end of Wanstead.
Turns out selling Christmas Trees is kinda fun. We met lots of locals, donned our Santa hats, deliberated about which tree would look best in the imagery living room we had never seen, served (drank) Vin Chaud, and delivered trees if it was too far to carry. We got into the spirit of things. We also threw the odd child in the netting machine.
Each year, we have continued to sell Christmas trees as a side project, to amplify the festive spirit of running a local neighbourhood pub. Since 2021, after the first Lockdown which we could sell trees, we decided we’d give more purpose to our project, teaming up with Elsa, an awesome local volunteer we met who ran a wonderful and inspiring initiative of 'spreading kindness through E11’, and raising money and awareness for her community programme.
In 2022, we decided we’d make things a bit more ‘formal’, establishing a Community outreach programme with Elsa, supporting further initiatives and charities throughout Wanstead and Leytonstone. So East London Tree’s was born, as we needed somewhere to manage online sales! We donate £10 of each tree sold to a charity of your choice.
2024 is our 11th year of selling trees. This year we hope to sell 500 trees, raising £5000 for good causes.
As part of our programme, we also aim to provide over 500 Christmas lunches throughout the festive period, to those in need, supporting local churches, homeless shelters, food banks, and directly to isolated members of the community.
Our Christmas market on the 7th Dec, further raises funds for the programme, with all the money raised going directly to our outreach work at The Duke.
Trees will be on sale from Friday 29th November at the Duke, and every day until we are sold out. If the pub is open, you can buy a tree!
DELIVERY - We also deliver across East London and some parts of Essex.
We look forward to providing or delivering you a tree this Christmas!
Ronnie & Elsa x