A Tree Is a Bad Gift. But It’ll Grow on You.

On the surface, trees seem like poor gifts. You can’t wrap them up neatly in fine wrapping paper. It can take years for saplings to bear fruit, blossom, or ascend past “twig.” And they require commitment, patience, and sometimes triage—not the kind of physical and emotional labor you want to drop on an unsuspecting giftee.

For those very same reasons, though, a tree is exactly the right gift for certain types: people who don’t want or need more stuff, those who revel in gradually revealed rewards, or the types who are already tending a collection of leafy living things with expansive joy. My boyfriend has a closet with enough clothing to stock a boutique. The last thing that man needs is another sweater. Hence the maple.

Similarly, my parents are past the major-acquisition stage of life. But my mother is a gardener, and my dad previously doted on little kumquat and key lime plants, both of which succumbed to insects after spending the summer outdoors. So a few months ago, I got them a red finger lime tree, spiky leaves and all, to take its place in the line of adorable citrus house plants.

Wirecutter senior staff writer Rachel Cericola and beauty editor Patricia Tortolani can both attest to the hard-won charms of gifted Meyer lemon trees. Rachel’s tree required a grow light to weather winters spent indoors in Massachusetts. And Patty, who bought one for herself for Mother’s Day, now adds citrus fertilizer to the pot on her Miami patio. Growth, they agree, has been slow but beautiful, with bouts of anxiety when the tree fakes death in its dormant stage before bursting forth with intoxicatingly fragrant white flowers. Patty’s tree, which grew from 3 to 5 feet in a few years, started bearing lemons after a year or so; Rachel is still waiting.

And every year, a friend of mine receives a weeping cherry tree from her in-laws for her anniversary with her husband; they were overjoyed when the first one finally bloomed this spring.

In a world of instant gratification, trees both demand something deeper of and offer something to their owners.

The best way to acquire a tree is to visit a local nursery (where the stock is already suited to the region) and talk to a plant expert about your particular needs. Any online tree service will charge more for the packaging and secure delivery of its tender goods; that’s fair, of course, but there’s no such added cost at your nearest garden center.

Since I didn’t have a car, my only option was to order a maple online for my boyfriend. When I consulted my friend Max Falkowitz, a bonsai enthusiast, he recommended Fast Growing Trees and said it was “super reliable.” The website allows you to type in a zip code to filter by growing zone, so you don’t have to cross-check whether a plant is suitable for the climate. The company also has a one-year Alive & Thrive Guarantee, which offers a store credit for a plant that has died (as long as it was suited to the customer’s growing zone and soil type).

Then there’s the wow factor. Some online sellers offer a vast array of harder-to-find trees to suit varying tastes—say, an elegant olive tree or a bright calamansi bush.

Just note: Responsible sellers don’t ship certain plants, like citrus ones, to colder regions in the winter. That’s how my parents ended up getting their Christmas gift in March. (I was warned before checkout, and it didn’t deter me.)

I had a plan for giving my boyfriend his tree: He had a work trip the week of his birthday, so I could pop into his house while he was gone, hack out that stump, and then plant a new maple. I ordered a Bloodgood Japanese maple to arrive the October week prior.

When the tree arrived, however, I panicked: Its leaves were speckled with white spots. Was it diseased? After submitting photos to customer service and having a friendly exchange, the company rapidly sent me a nice-looking, even taller replacement. But this wasn’t the end of my troubles: That little stump was quite stubborn. I couldn’t use a chemical stump remover (it can take a year or more to work) or stump grinder (no rentals). I was afraid that if I spent too many hours or days sawing it, he would notice on his smart-lock app that I was at his house for a suspiciously long time.

Instead, upon his return I presented him with a tall cardboard box and a chore he’d been avoiding for years. Surprise! Happy Birthday! He had to remove that stump with a handsaw before planting the new one, with little time to spare before frost hit. He grumbled only once.

For months, it was a sad, leafless stick, but in late March, he sent me a photo. Tender twists of red leaves had sprouted on each slender branch. “All those blooms just popped out today,” he texted. “It’s alive!” I replied. By April, the leaves were gloriously unfurled.

It may be many years before this maple reaches the heights of its predecessor (if it ever does). This tree has many winters and pests ahead of it. Like relationships, trees require work and care, but they offer no guarantee of longevity in return. They have, argued the great woodworker George Nakashima, a soul, but you need not be an animist to appreciate them.

In my parents’ own backyard, there is a beacon of hope: the sloping, gnarled Japanese maple my mother’s Uncle George gave them for their wedding, in 1971. I have no idea what other gifts they received on that day 53 years ago. But we, their children and grandchildren, all know that tree—regal centerpiece of the family garden, its leaves a thick crown of shade come summer.

This article was edited by Hannah Morrill and Jennifer Hunter.