Christmas tree in Watermael-Boitsfort

In Watermael-Boitsfort, Vert Sapin delivers your Christmas tree free of charge, right into the garden cities of Le Logis and Floréal. Built in the early 1920s and now listed, according to urban.brussels, they draw on English cottage-style garden cities: colourful houses, tree-lined streets. Green woodwork and streets named after animals in Le Logis, yellow woodwork and streets named after flowers in Floréal: whatever the street, your tree is handed to you at your door, in its net.

Two former hamlets, a municipality of houses

Until the early 19th century, IBSA recalls, Watermael and Boitsfort were two separate hamlets. To the north, old Watermael, with Place Keym, extends into Le Dries beyond the Brussels-Namur railway. To the south, near the Sonian Forest, old Boitsfort extends into the workers’ houses of Le Coin du Balai. The train and the tram then brought the villas, first along Chaussée de La Hulpe.

According to IBSA, blocks of flats here remain far rarer than across the Region. Worker’s house or villa, measure your ceiling. If it measures 2.50 m, we would point you to a tree of 175 to 200 cm; if it doesn’t reach 2.40 m, drop a size.

Choosing your tree on Place Wiener

Our Watermael-Boitsfort stall is on Place Wiener, in the old hamlet of Boitsfort, with its station. You choose your tree there in person, it leaves wrapped, and the small sizes fit in a car boot.

The Sonian Forest covers a large part of the south of Watermael-Boitsfort, the greenest municipality in the Region according to IBSA. Our trees don’t come from it: they come from a certified organic grower, a Belgian family that grows them. After the holidays, the Bruxelles-Propreté Recypark on Chaussée de Wavre, in Auderghem, is open to residents of the municipality. Our article on a tree’s second life offers other ideas.