Crestwood Spruce Garland: An Honest Review

Two Christmases ago I stood at the bottom of my staircase with a plain artificial garland in one hand and a tangled strand of lights in the other and decided I was finished with that particular job. The banister in this house has no outlet anywhere near it. Not at the bottom, not at the top, not tucked behind the newel post. Every December I wound lights through that garland by hand and taped the cord along the baseboard, and every January I untangled the whole thing on the living room floor. That is how the National Tree Company Crestwood Spruce garland came into my house. Nine feet of pre-lit spruce that runs on batteries, which meant no cord, no tape, and no afternoon spent on my knees.

This is an honest review, so here is the honest shape of it. The garland does the job I bought it for and it has done it for two seasons without a single light failing. It also sheds glitter on my stair treads, it is thinner up close than the catalog photo suggests, and it comes with no manufacturer warranty at all. Whether any of that matters depends entirely on where you plan to hang it. I will walk you through all of it, including the parts I would change if I could.

How This Garland Ended Up on My Banister

For more than twenty years before this, my banister wore a plain artificial garland and a strand of lights I wound through it myself. It looked fine. It took the better part of an afternoon, and by the time I finished, my hands were sticky from the fake branches and I had usually knocked the same picture frame off the wall twice. When I finally admitted I was tired of it, I went looking for a garland with the lights already in it. The catch was the outlet. There is not one within reach, and there never has been.

I want to be clear that I picked a battery garland out of necessity, not preference. Three AA batteries sit in a small box on the cord, and that box tucks behind the bottom post of my banister where nobody sees it. From the front hall you would not know there is a battery box at all. Standing on the stairs, if you are looking for it, you can see it. I have made my peace with that.

I hang it myself. Gary carries the boxes up from the basement, that is the whole of his contribution, and I do the rest. Soft fabric ties, the kind you would use on a curtain, looped around the banister and the garland both. No nails, no tape, no staples, nothing that leaves a mark on the wood. Nine feet covers my banister with a little to spare, which I gather at the bottom post and tuck behind the battery box. It takes me about ten minutes now that I know how I want it to sit.

What the Listing Photograph Does Not Tell You

The photographs online show a dense, even garland. What arrives is over one hundred branch tips spread across nine feet, and that is not the same thing as dense. Up close, in daylight, you can see through it in places. At night, with the lights on, that stops mattering. During the day it reads as a decent artificial garland and nothing more. If you are hanging this somewhere it will be examined closely, a mantel at eye level or a table centerpiece, that thinness will bother you. On a banister, where people see it from six feet away and mostly in the evening, it does not bother me at all.

The tips are glittered. National Tree Company describes them as having a glittered finish, and the effect under the lights is genuinely pretty. What the listing does not mention is that glitter sheds. Not in any dramatic way, and not forever, but the first time the garland comes out of the box each season there is a light dusting of it on the stair treads and on my hands. By the second week it settles down. I keep a damp cloth handy when I hang it and I wipe the treads once. That is the whole cost of it.

It weighs 2.8 pounds. That sounds like a detail until you are the one standing on a step stool holding the garland up with one hand while you tie a fabric strip with the other. It is light enough that I manage the entire thing alone, which I could not say about the garland and lights setup I had before. The flip side of light is that it does not drape on its own. It holds whatever shape you tie it into, and where it sags, it sags because you let it.

The material is PVC. Nobody will mistake it for real spruce at close range and I would be doing you a disservice to suggest otherwise. What it does have is a shape that reads correctly from a distance, which is what most of us actually need on a staircase in December.

The Battery Question, Answered Honestly

Three AA batteries. That is the entire power source. There is no cord, no plug, no extension, and no way to convert it. If you are the sort of person who would lose sleep over replacing batteries in a decoration, this is not the garland for you, and I say that without judgment because I am married to someone exactly like that.

In my house the batteries go in when the garland goes up the weekend after Thanksgiving and that is the last thought I give them until it comes down the first weekend of January. I keep a spare pack in the kitchen drawer where the candle remote lives, and I have never once had to go get it mid season. Your results will depend on how long you leave it running each evening. I turn mine off when I go to bed. If you are someone who leaves lights burning all night, expect to change them more often than I do.

This is the trade I made and I would make it again. What I gave up was the ability to plug something in and forget it. What I got was a lit banister in a hallway that has never had an outlet and never will unless we pay an electrician. For a decoration that lives on a railing for five weeks a year, that was the right trade.

Three AA batteries, nine feet of garland, no outlet in that hallway. Two seasons in, the batteries have never died before New Year and the lights have never failed.

Where It Genuinely Falls Short

The warranty is none. That is printed right in the product details and it surprised me when I finally read it. For what this costs I would have liked a season or two of coverage on the lights. I have not needed it, but the absence of it means that if a strand does go, the fix is on me. I mention it because I would rather you hear it from me now than find out in year three.

Fifty lights over nine feet is not a lot of light. The spacing is even, which helps, but this is a garland that glows rather than a garland that sparkles with light. If your staircase is dark and you want the banister to be the brightest thing in the room, one garland will not do it. I have seen people double this up or run a second strand alongside, and I understand why.

It is a single nine foot piece. There is no way to connect two of them end to end and run them from one battery box, so if your banister is longer than mine or you want the garland to turn a corner and travel up the newel post, you are buying two and dealing with two battery boxes. Mine reaches the bottom post and stops. I considered taking it further and decided a second box was not worth hiding.

And the glitter. I have already said it sheds. The reason it belongs on this list and not only in the paragraph above is that glitter on stair treads is a slip hazard on bare wood, and I have a husband who is sixty-four and does not need that. I wipe the treads the day the garland goes up and again a week later, and after that it is fine. If someone in your house is unsteady on stairs, wipe them twice.

Storage, and What Year Two Was Like

Storage is the part nobody reviews and it is the part that decides whether you still like a decoration in year three. The garland came in a cardboard box with the battery box, and that is where it lives from the first weekend of January to the weekend after Thanksgiving, on a shelf in my unfinished basement. It does not come with a bag or a bin. I did not buy one. The box has held up for two seasons and I expect it will hold up for a few more, but it is cardboard in a basement, so eventually I will be finding something else.

I unpack it and there is glitter. Every year. I have stopped being surprised by it. A minute with a damp cloth and it is behind me. The branch tips have held their shape, nothing has come loose, and both seasons every one of the fifty lights has come on when the batteries went in. That last part is the thing I actually care about, because a pre-lit garland with a dead section is worse than no garland at all.

One thing I do now that I did not do the first year: I coil it loosely, following the shape it came in, instead of wrapping it tight around my arm the way I used to with the old garland. The branches come out of storage looking like branches instead of a flattened rope. It takes an extra minute going in and saves me ten minutes of fluffing the next November.

What It Replaced, and Whether That Was an Upgrade

Before this I had a plain artificial garland and a separate strand of lights I wound through it every year. The old setup cost less and I already owned it, so this was not a case of the new thing being cheaper. It was a case of my time being worth something. Twenty minutes of winding lights in December, twenty minutes of untangling in January, and a cord taped along a baseboard that I looked at all season and disliked. That is the honest accounting.

The upgrade was real and it was about time, not beauty. The old garland with lights pushed through it was arguably fuller, because I could shove the strand deep into the branches wherever I wanted it. The National Tree Company garland has its lights placed at the factory and they sit where they sit. What I got in exchange was ten minutes of hanging and no cord. Two seasons in I would make the same choice again, and I have not once missed the old setup.

Who This Is For

This is for the person who wants a lit garland somewhere that has no outlet and no easy way to get one. A banister, a doorway, a shelf above a cabinet, a porch post. The battery box is the entire point of this product, and if that describes your situation, it solves a real problem that a plug-in garland cannot solve at any level of quality.

It is also for someone who decorates alone and does not want to wrestle a corded strand through cold branches. It is light, it hangs in minutes with fabric ties, and it comes off just as fast. If you are the only one in your house who does this work, as I am, that matters more than any detail about branch tips.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your banister has an outlet within reach. A corded garland of the same length gives you more light, no battery changes, and one less thing to think about. The battery version is a compromise, and there is no reason to make a compromise you do not have to make.

Skip it if you want a garland that passes for real spruce up close, if you need more than one strand joined end to end from a single power source, if glitter on your floors would genuinely upset you, or if you will not buy a product with no warranty behind it. All of those are fair reasons. None of them made me return mine, but I am one person with one banister in one house.