Eucalyptus Adventures

Yes you can grow Eucalyptus in the North of England although the mosaic below was created largely from Australian leaves by Robyn Jay.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) on flicr

It is about 12 years ago that I planted a small pot grown Eucalyptus near a wall in my garden (the wall may be the first mistake and the crazy paving path would be my second). For the first few years or so the shrub sized tree did quite well and provided an exotic feel and aromatic leaves without problems. As the growth exceeded 10% every year the Eucalyptus began to out pace itself growing in girth as well as height. At 30 feet high another 3 plus feet for every subsequent year became daunting. Eucalyptus are tall growing trees in their natural habitat (300 feet +) which aint an English urban garden. At the same time the crazy paving became too crazy with the roots of the Australian ‘mountain ash‘ or Eucalyptus. Thus the decision was taken it had to go.

As luck would have it a tree surgeon was working 20 gardens away and I hoped to get a quick, cheap job ( there is no such thing). I told the guys to take down the Eucalyptus tree on the corner of my street little realising the neighbor on the other corner also had a tall Eucalyptus in need of lopping. How could I miss such a prominent plant. Fortunately I was asked to pay beforehand and the neighbors tree was saved for another day. Due to potential damage to the wall and path I was happy to leave the stump in the ground; big mistake. You can see why with the little blue shoots starting to grow despite the treated stump with a slit for poison.

A few months later and far from starting to rot down an 18″ mass of side shoots has sprung from the old trunk. My wife has