Solihull Christmas tree to be viewed by millions this year as Covent Garden centre-piece

A 60ft Christmas tree, born and bred in Solihull, has been chopped down, wrapped up and started its journey to become this year's infamous Covent Garden centre-piece.

The Norway Spruce will stand as London's tallest handpicked Christmas tree, after growing for 40 years in the Shirley soil at Woods Farm Christmas Trees.

It will be dressed in over 30,000 red and white lights, hundreds of baubles and will take more than 20 people to erect.

The process of getting the tree ready will take a 20ft crane, four days and another 20 lighting technicians to put the lights and baubles on.

It will go up on Monday (31 October) and the West Midlands masterpiece will stand completed in the Covent Garden Piazza from 8 November.

Jeff Gilbert, the co-owner of Woods Farm Christmas trees in Shirley, is delighted to have once again grown what will be the capital's most impressive Christmas tree.

He added: "It's an honour. It's nice that it's viewed by so many at Covent Garden. Obviously one of the most high profile sights in Europe for trees to being viewed."

The London-based decorations team visit the farm to choose the exact one they want but the fir-grower said: "You always know pretty well which tree they're going to choose."

Covent garden is one of the most iconic sights to go to over the Christmas period to idolise the decorations.

The Shirley tree will be visited by millions of locals and tourists but the owner says the process of getting the tree there must be careful.

He said: "All of the bigger trees that are over 30ft, they're not felled and dropped on the ground because that damages the trees.

"They're hooked up to a digger, then they're lifted off the ground as they're cut and carried out without any damage, put through a wrapping machine so that they can go on an artic lorry and travel down to wherever they've got to go in the country."

The Shirley grown tree will stand in one of the most high profile sites in Europe.

Rachel Gould, from Sculptivate, said: "We have produced the Christmas decorations for Covent Garden for almost 12 years.

"One of my roles is to come down here to the farm, with our clients, and pick the best tree that we can every year."

When asked what they look for in the infamous tree, she said: "We always look for something that's got great height because it needs to be 60ft once we install it at Covent Garden.

"We look for a nice full top, you can see it's got a very symmetrical top and lots of lovely branches that can hold the decorations.

"We've got lovely big silver baubles going on there, we've got red and white lights."