Joanne Sunn’s Uncle Showed Up With a Spruce 30 Years Ago and Told Her to Plant It. Now the 40-Foot Tree Is Milwaukee’s Christmas Tree.

The spruce arrived at Joanne Sunn’s house as a gift with simple instructions. Her uncle showed up one day, handed it over and told her to put it in the yard. Thirty years later, that Colorado blue spruce stands 40 feet tall, and on Nov. 5 city crews cut it down to become Milwaukee’s official Christmas tree.

Joanne Sunn told News 8000 that her uncle came by with the tree and suggested she plant it in the yard. “It’s been there for 30 years,” she said.

A tree that outgrew its corner

The Sunns live on Mill Street near 118th Street in the Park Knoll neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side. Their spruce had simply gotten too big for the spot where it was planted, Joanne Sunn said, so the couple decided to give it away. “And now it’s got a little big for this spot,” she said.

Her husband, Al Sunn, put a date on it. He told CBS 58 that his wife planted it in 1996, and that the couple has decorated it every year since.

The decorations grew along with the tree. The couple told CBS 58 that it started out with white lights and little red bows before they moved on to strung lights. News 8000 reported that they decorated it every Christmas as it grew.

Joanne Sunn said the spruce “kind of fit the bill” for the city’s search, and she called it the most beautiful Christmas tree ever.

How the city found it

Milwaukee’s Department of Public Works opened its search in September. A Sept. 14 city press release asked residents and property owners to nominate a tree at least 30 feet tall, inside city limits, by Sept. 25. Crews judged candidates on size, shape, uniformity, density and color.

The tree also had to be reachable by crane, with no overhead wires or other obstacles that could get in the way of removal, according to the release.

The release laid out what happens to the donor’s yard afterward. DPW Forestry staff bring the tree down with a crane, load it on a flatbed trailer and take it downtown under police escort. They later grind the stump and restore the spot with soil and grass seed.

Harvest day on Mill Street

Forestry crews cut the spruce on the morning of Thursday, Nov. 5, after a search that began in September, according to FOX6, which reported the details from the Department of Public Works. Mayor Cavalier Johnson, city officials, Milwaukee Bucks representatives and the Sunns were there to watch, News 8000 reported.

A Milwaukee Police Department escort then guided the tree along a planned route across the city to its new spot just outside Fiserv Forum in the Deer District.

Johnson tied this year’s tree to the city’s baseball season, saying the Brewers’ first World Series title makes it “extra, extra special.” He added, “This is going to be one for the history books.”

Last year’s tree was a yard tree too

The Sunns are not the first neighbors to hand over a yard tree for the job. Milwaukee’s 2025 tree was also a Colorado blue spruce, a 38-footer donated by Kaitlyn Schmidt Thabet and Amgad Thabet, Scripps News reported last November.

Amgad Thabet said that decision “was all out of a whim.” Chris Kling, the city’s urban forestry manager, said at the time that the tree had “everything” the city looks for: “size, shape, color, access.”

This year’s search weighed much the same qualities, News 8000 reported: size, shape, fullness and how easily crews could reach the tree. The Sunns’ spruce is two feet taller than last year’s, and it had three decades of family holidays behind it before the crane arrived on Mill Street.

The 113th lighting

The tree will make its public debut on Friday, Nov. 20. This year marks the 113th annual city Christmas tree lighting, and the city describes the tradition as the longest-running official city tree in the country after New York City’s.

The spruce will stand in what the city calls the Cheer District, the holiday setup outside Fiserv Forum. Last year’s lighting, according to the city’s holiday page, was the fourth straight year the tree had been displayed there.

Stories of yard trees going public this season have a familiar shape. Earlier this month this site covered a Mesick, Michigan, spruce planted as a birthday gift that became Detroit’s tree and the Decker family’s Norway spruce bound for Rockefeller Center.

Under the city’s process, the corner of the Sunns’ yard where the spruce stood gets a ground stump and fresh grass seed. The tree itself will spend the season lit up downtown, after 30 years of being decorated at home.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Anatoly Mikhaltsov – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons