Ashland’s Festival of Trees grows

Over 16,000 people traveled to Ashland, Ky. to see the various exhibits and new category at Festival of Trees and Trains at the Paramount Arts Center.

“This is the 35th annual Festival of Trees and Train,” Tamme Grubb, lead chair of the festival, said. “It is an event that is sponsored by the Paramount Women’s Association, which is an organization that’s sole purpose is to support the Paramount, raise funds for the paramount, and we support and continue the youth education programs here.”

At the festival, the decorated trees are donated by local artisans, groups and community members. The proceeds from the trees, wreaths, gift packages and concessions all go to the Paramount’s programs and restoration for the historic theatre.

This year brought a new category to the festival.

“We bought old bowling pins, which turns out, came from an old bowling alley that closed in Morehead,” Grubb said. “We gave them to local artisans and they created artwork out of those.”

The bowling pins were painted, sculpted and put up on stilts for the exhibit. They were decorated as different famous Christmas characters, snowy scenes and animals.

Changing things up has helped the Festival of Trees and Trains raise their number of attendees, but it’s not just the bowling pins bringing in the people.

“About four years ago,” Grubb said. “We would let the schools bring their kids for a dollar a piece and come to the festival. Then, we decided to try to get sponsors to let the kids come for free, and not have to pay that dollar. We went from 700 kids to this year, we have 3100 kids coming for the difference of a dollar.”

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