This Year, Your Christmas Tree Can Go Back to Lake Sammamish

This December you can bring home a Christmas tree from the shore of Lake Sammamish, keep it for the holidays, and return it in January. If it comes through the holidays healthy, it's planted the following spring along a salmon-bearing stream in Lake Sammamish State Park, and you're invited to help plant it. The program is called Holiday Trees for Habitats. It's run by the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust and Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park, and pickup happens at a holiday market that's new this year.

Most of the dates that matter fall outside December.

The Whole Calendar, Start to Finish

The Greenway Trust's page lists the January return dates and the spring planting without a year. Since pickup is in December 2026, the return dates would fall in January 2027.

The Deadline Is in November, and It May Come Sooner

The Greenway Trust takes reservations online from October 1 through November 23. It warns that trees are likely to run out before that date. You can't order at the market, because the market handles pickup of preorders only.

There are two sizes. A 2-foot tree is a suggested minimum donation of $100 and weighs about 10 pounds. A 4-foot tree is a suggested minimum of $200 and weighs about 15 to 20 pounds. The donations go to the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust and Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park for habitat restoration in the Issaquah area.

There's a good local reason to expect the trees to go early. The Cities of Sammamish and Issaquah are holding a joint Tree Giveaway on Saturday, November 7, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Historic Pickering Barn, and the city's page says it has already reached its goal of 650 trees. Anyone who still wants one can join a waitlist, and unclaimed trees go to people on that list. The giveaway trees are for planting in your own yard, and the city points to a tree catalog to help you match a species to your soil, sun and space. The holiday adoption works the other way around. Your tree comes home for the season and then goes back to the park.

December 5 Is Two Events in One Parking Plan

Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park calls this year's market the first of its kind, held alongside the living-tree program:

"This festive event supports two local nonprofit organizations while launching a new tradition for our environmentally conscious community that helps grow a future forest."

The market takes place at the Meadow Shelter, at 2010 NW Sammamish Rd in Issaquah. Booths are both inside the climate-controlled shelter and outdoors. Tree pickup happens separately, in the nearby Tibbetts Beach parking area, so look for the signs.

What to expect on the day:

• Free entry to the market, whether or not you adopted a tree
• Local makers and artisans, handmade gifts, seasonal treats, and a fresh wreath-making workshop
• A 2026 ornament, which the organizers have asked vendors to design as a one-of-a-kind piece for the market
• A Discover Pass to enter the park. The official Discover Pass page lists a day pass at $10 and an annual pass at $45
• Limited parking in a small lot next to the Meadow Shelter, with more within a short walk

The vendor list hasn't been posted yet. The Greenway Trust says it will add names closer to December 5.

The car matters more than with a cut tree. These trees come in plastic pots full of soil. They shouldn't ride on the roof, but they can lie on their side, and a tarp or old sheet keeps soil and loose needles in place. Volunteers will carry your tree to your car, but for liability reasons you have to load it yourself, so the organizers suggest bringing a helper.

Species are handed out first-come, first-served at pickup, from a mix of Grand fir, Douglas fir and Sitka spruce. If you want a particular one, the organizers suggest arriving early, though they can't promise it.

If you can't make Saturday, there's a backup pickup on Sunday, December 6, from noon to 3 p.m. at the Greenway Trust Native Plant Nursery inside the park. If you miss both, the tree stays with the nonprofits for future planting. You don't get a refund, but your payment still counts as a donation.

Seven to Ten Days Inside

Plan your holidays around this part. A living tree is dormant, and warm air can wake it up. The Greenway Trust's care instructions recommend keeping it indoors for only about 7 to 10 days. That's a short stay if your household usually decorates right after Thanksgiving.

The program's guidance, in order:

1. Before the indoor stretch, keep the tree outdoors or in a cold garage.
2. Water it until water drains out the bottom before you bring it in.
3. Choose a cool room and keep the tree away from heat vents, fireplaces and other heat sources.
4. Use LED lights only. Incandescent bulbs give off too much heat.
5. Check the soil every other day. If it's dry an inch down, water lightly until water shows in the saucer. You can also fill the saucer with gravel and water and top it up daily.
6. When the indoor week ends, move the tree to a sheltered spot for several days before it goes back out into freezing weather.

The care page also suggests skipping the indoor stretch altogether. It says the tree is "happiest outdoors" on a deck or porch, decorated with strung cranberries, suet-and-seed balls, or pine cones dipped in suet and seed. On a covered Sammamish porch, the birds get the decorations and the tree never has to adjust to a heated living room.

January Brings the Tree Back to the Lake

The return dates are Saturday, January 9, and Saturday, January 16, each from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Lake Sammamish State Park. The nonprofits care for the trees until spring, when they become part of a habitat restoration project. Whether a tree can be replanted depends on how well it held up in your house, which is why the care schedule matters.

Spring Puts It Beside a Salmon Stream

The program says only that adopted trees will go "along a salmon-bearing stream" in the park. It doesn't name the stream. Washington State Parks describes the park's floodplains as including Issaquah and Tibbetts Creeks.

Recent work on one of those creeks shows the kind of restoration the park is doing. In fall 2025 the Greenway Trust finished an in-stream restoration of Lower Issaquah Creek, after what its project page calls "decades of planning." The work reconnected the creek to its floodplain, put more than 500 pieces of large wood into the channel and more than 300 more on the banks, and reopened historic side channels. The Trust says it is planting 10,000 to 15,000 native trees and shrubs in the first year to support wildlife and shade the water to keep it cool, and that millions of juvenile Chinook and other salmon now have better places to spawn, grow and survive. Streamside planting is the same kind of work the adopted trees are meant for, even though the program hasn't said which reach they'll go to.

Adopters will get an invitation to help plant their own tree next spring. If you'd like to get your hands dirty before then, both the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust and Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park run restoration and tree-planting events through the year.

At Stacy Hecht, we follow the places that make life on the Plateau feel rooted, and this lakeshore is one of them. If you'd like to talk about homes near the trails and creeks around Lake Sammamish, explore Pacific Northwest homes with us.