Every year in early December, snow falls in a picket-fenced lot in Cayman. Fairy lights glisten, carollers sing, and a small team of elves bustle about pairing perfect Christmas trees with cheery customers.
Wonderland Christmas Trees is the company behind this cheer, an organisation that brings in Christmas trees to Cayman annually.
Wonderland is run by husband-and-wife team Blake and Jaime Rogers, who, as well as parenting 4-year-old Miles and 14-year-old pup Harley, juggle spreading Christmas cheer with day jobs. Jaime is graphic design lead for Real Vision and Blake is the operations manager for DMS Broadcasting’s seven radio stations and one half of the 106.1 Kiss FM morning duo ‘Blake & Erin’.
Blake explains everything that goes into bringing Christmas cheer to so many customers.
Q: What made you want to start Wonderland Christmas Trees?
A: We love Christmas time and bringing joy to others for the holidays. I have previous experience selling Christmas trees for the Boy Scouts in the US, and locally we saw the need in Cayman for something more focused on bespoke customer service and the entire family experience of picking out that perfect Christmas tree at a real Christmas tree lot.
There wasn’t anything too magical about a family picking up their tree from a container, so we created Wonderland Christmas Trees, which features a real Christmas tree lot that is focused on the sights, scents and sounds that help make this experience so memorable and special.
The lot is a winter wonderland with visits from Santa on his sleigh and we even have nightly snowfalls – the only place in the Caribbean where you can find snow.
Q: Where do you source your trees from and why did you choose this location?
A: We work very closely with a fantastic tree farm located in the fertile regions of Quebec, Canada that produce some of the finest Christmas trees grown in North America with several hundred acres of balsam firs, which are known for their needle retention and lasting fragrance. Our tree farm is also committed to the eco-friendly practices of the industry ensuring that cutting trees has low impact to the environment. As a matter of fact, one acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people. Our farm also does a great job working with our Department of Agriculture’s pest control guidelines to make sure unwanted critters are not imported.
Q: What is the behind-the-process when it comes to importing trees to Cayman and sending them home with happy customers?
A: We actually start the planning in May and start talking with our tree farm about our upcoming season and number of trees that we’ll be needing. We usually fire up the social media and website in late August when we open up for tree orders. Believe it or not, we have a large number of Christmas lovers that order in August to secure their Christmas tree. The trees are usually freshly cut the first week in November and are loaded onto containers (we usually bring in two 40ft refrigerated containers with about 1,000 trees each year) which are then driven to Brooklyn, NYC and then get loaded onto a cargo ship that sails through Jamaica, then to Cayman…arriving in Cayman in late November.
A lot happens once they arrive – clearing them from Seaboard and customs, getting them trucked to our lot location at Cost-U-Less, and then having the Dept. of Agriculture do the inspection of the trees. The inspection process is the most nerve-racking part of the season as the Dept. of Agriculture requires us to unload every tree from the container, cut open every 10th tree and shack it onto a white sheet on the ground, which then gets closely inspected for bugs and unwanted critters. They could ‘fail’ the container based on what they find, which would then require the painful process of cutting open every tree and having them fumigated for several days in extra containers. You pray that your tree farm has done their job throughout the growing process with their bug treatments.
Q: Tell us about Wonderland’s partnerships with Meals on Wheels and Cayman Food Bank.
A: Part of our ethos is to give back to our community, and bringing joy to people during the holiday season comes in many different forms. One of the basic necessities in life is food, and nobody should ever have to go hungry. So, we fundraise throughout our season for Meals on Wheels and the Cayman Food Bank, and then at the end, Wonderland matches dollar for dollar what we have fundraised.
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