Ever-Green Interiors Brightens Faneuil Hall Evergreen

By Nancy K. Crevier

Calling it “One of my favorite jobs of all time,” Ever-Green Interiors’ owner John Kruzshak returned Wednesday, November 14, from a three-day trip to Boston where he and three members of his interior landscaping staff installed the lighting for the 60-foot Christmas tree that welcomes shoppers to the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in the city’s North End.

The tree sits just 50 feet from the waterfront, near Quincy Market in the center of the plaza. “This tree is only about 15 feet shorter than the tree placed at Rockefeller Center each year,” said Mr Kruzshak, and noted that local Bostonians were referring to the Faneuil Hall evergreen as “The Green Monster,” a play on Boston’s Red Sox Fenway Park outfield wall.

Mr Kruzshak, who with his wife, Diana, owns Ever-Green Interiors, has been creating indoor plantscapes for corporate and commercial businesses for 27 years, the last 16 out of Newtown. A chance meeting with the owner of Cityscapes of Boston at a September trade show in Las Vegas landed him the opportunity to take on the lighting challenge for the tree, the largest yet for which his company has outfitted an array of lights. The Boston company, he said, felt capable of handling the decorations for the massive evergreen, but the intricacies of lighting the tree was outside their scope. “Cityscapes needed someone with more expertise in the lighting area, so they hired us to do the job,” Mr Kruzshak said.

Placing 8,000 C-7 white bulbs on a tree takes some know-how, including understanding how many of the lights can go on one circuit, Mr Kruzshak explained. “There are over 42 20-amp circuits going into the Faneuil Hall tree,” he said, double the amount going into an ordinary home. Each branch, some of which his crew moved from one part of the tree to another to plump up any gaps, is wrapped individually with lights. “There is some skill involved in that, so that all of the lights are uniform, with no dark spots, when the tree is lit up,” Mr Kruzshak said.

Decorating a 60-foot Christmas tree calls for a little nerve, as well. Ever-Green workers had to lean from the buckets of the two cherry pickers that brought them up, up, and away to the top of the tree where work began. “We string the lights from the top down. The first fifteen minutes are a little hairy, but then you get used to it. You have to like being up high,” chuckled Mr Kruzshak.

The holidays have always been a favorite time of year for Mr Kruzshak, who even as a child had his own tree in his room. “Ever since I was a little kid, I was into Christmas stuff. I loved putting the lights on the tree even then,” he said. That love has paid off over the years, and now approximately 25 percent of his yearly business comes from decorating corporations for the holidays with live and artificial plants. Smaller trees and wreaths are decorated at the Turnberry Lane warehouse off of Toddy Hill that Mr Kruzshak moved into the beginning of November, but trees more than nine feet tall are adorned on site, he said.

Clear, sunny weather in Boston made a daunting job enjoyable all around, said Mr Kruzshak, of the biggest job he has ever undertaken.

The installation of a six-story-tall, 400-pound wreath for a Stamford business prevented Mr Kruzshak from attending the official lighting of the Faneuil Hall tree by Mayor Thomas M. Menino on Saturday evening, November 17, but knowing that he is vicariously a part of Boston’s holiday season is sufficient, he said.

“You get a good sense of accomplishment when you do something that is viewed by so many people. We could see as we were working how much people enjoyed the tree.”