The best dressed Christmas tree in Yorkshire

We had some stunning entries to our Best Dressed Christmas Tree competition. Here are the winners and some of the best contenders. Sharon Dale reports
The winning tree by Linda WilliamsThe winning tree by Linda Williams
The winning tree by Linda Williams

Our competition to find Yorkshire’s best-dressed Christmas tree brought us a wonderful array of entries.

They included an 80-year-old tree from Goole made from goose feathers; an eco-friendly willow woven tree in York set to be recycled as a frame for sweet peas and a tree from Scarborough adorned with cross-stitched decorations that the owner has been making since 1996. We also had lots of fabulous firs full of baubles that bring back happy memories of Christmas’s past.

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Judging was a joy but choosing a winner was difficult. In the end, the best-dressed award went to Linda Williams from Shipley. Her tree is bursting with baubles thanks to a supreme effort.

The mannequin treeThe mannequin tree
The mannequin tree

“It takes me days to do but I love decorating my tree,” says Linda, who wins a £500 voucher for the new Neptune interiors store, near York, and a case of fine wine from Yorkshire specialists Field and Fawcett.

We also awarded a special prize to friends Anna William and Kimberley Taylor for their exceptionally creative “supermodel” tree. They each won a bottle of champagne from Harvey Nichols.

The tree was fashioned from an old mannequin, chicken wire, branches from four small artificial Christmas trees and fairy lights. It was dressed with sentimental decorations, including Kimberley’s grandmother’s necklace, which was used as a belt, and a gold velvet top from their late friend, Margaret Murdoch, who lived in Castleford.

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“We came up with the idea for the tree after deciding we wanted a completely homemade Christmas,” says Kimberley. “We made the skirt from chicken wire and weaved the branches into it with the fairy lights underneath. Maggie had given me some clothes before she died and I knew I would never wear them but I didn’t want to throw them away. Our tree was the perfect place for them. We used her gold top and we also used some buttons from the clothes to decorate the tips of the branches. She was a lovely lady and we thought it only right to name our tree after her. We have called it Maggie in her honour.”