Choosing Your Pet-Friendly Christmas Plants

Have You Chosen Your Pet-Friendly Christmas House Plants?

Christmas is a busy time and part of the festivities can include decorating your house with wreaths, garlands, trees, plants, shrubs, and pot plants giving them to friends, family, and colleagues as Christmas presents.

Christmas Trees 

Popular since the 1840s, in the UK, as a traditional part of the festivities include a number of different varieties of fir pine trees. The trees have prickly needles and these can be dangerous to dogs and cats where the needles can fall off which can hurt pet paws, and if eaten, cut pet mouths, and puncture their stomach intestinal linings.

UK Christmas trees that are known for dropping fewer needles after being cut and displayed during the traditional period include the Blue Spruce which is a blueish colour particularly at its most vibrant colour during spring and renowned for being hardy surviving British winters if bought in a pot with a root ball when displayed and planted outside, and the Nordmann Fir. Both trees are available from numerous stockists up and down the country.

Tips

Hyacinths bulbs can be poisonous if your pet manages to get dig them out of a plant pot. Cut flowers are better in the home.

Narcissus bulbs, like hyacinth bulbs, can be poisonous causing vomiting, drooling, or rarely, diarrhea if they manage to eat the bulbs. Cut flowers are better in the home.

Christmas Cactus is a little spikey causing a mild irritant if eaten.

Cranberries are generally safe unless the pet manages to feast on them.

Poinsettias can give mild toxicity if too much is eaten being the usual signs of drooling vomiting, or rarely, and later stage diarrhea.

Shopping Local and supporting your high street has never been more important, a quick google check will provide you with your best florist selling plants. Look for those particularly that sell plants without added glitter, additional trimmings, and baubles for a more pet-friendly and safer Christmas.

Important is to position your flowers and plants in the home mindful of your inquisitive pets and that most plants are grown with the aid of toxic pesticides unless specifically purchased from organic growers, so take care and site plants above waist height making them inaccessible to pets.