View down the driveway.

Is the little black and white bundle a visitor or yours Dwyllis.

I did not realise you had a long driveway. The red flax looks like aphormium to me. Your lovely Cordyline in the back garden can grow to 20m. The Kowhai at around 8m will be a midget in comparison.

The driveway is quite long, & this is just showing part of it .... it needs to be re-gravelled shortly, as winter rain has made it very muddy & not at all nice to look at or walk along. Our neighbours over the back fence have a yellow kowhai which is around 8 mtrs now ... & I thought that looked like a montrously tall tree! Now I am worried about the red coryline ... I had no idea it would grow to that height! We had a green palm-type tree in our previous garden which would have been about that height, & I loved looking out the bedroom window at it ... made me feel as if I was on holiday in Fiji on really sunny days! I might have to think about resiting this red cordyline, as the green one is very close by. I thought they would look lovely growing together. I might pop down to the local garden centre where I bought it from (the red one) & see what they say.

So much depends on the weather and the soil in which it is growing. Do none of your neighbours have these so you can check out the likely height? The GC will know what grows locally. I am often mystified why gardening books are happy to tell you what plants will do in approx. 10 years time but forget that we expect to keep plants long term not just for ten years. Cutting back mature trees is an expensive job for an expert.

The green version, which is sitting next to the red, but much bigger, grows everywhere in NZ .... you can't drive anywhere without seeing it everywhere lol. So I took special note of them as I was driving into work today, & the biggest I saw would probably have been around the 8-10 mtres mark ... hard to tell when flashing along the highway at 100k, but that's what it looked to be. I was expecting around 8mtrs when fully grown, so its going to be interesting, but I will have a word with the lady at the garden centre I bought it from .... I know I have seen pics of red cordylines growing in pots, so maybe they have varieties of them which mature at different heights? I sure hope so.

Growing in a pot restricts the roots and therefore the plant. It will only grow as big as the pot can sustain. You can get root bands which do restrict the size of roots and therefore the growth of the plant. The plant can put roots down but not out beyond the root ban. You can make one of your own rather than buying one.

That's interesting. I haven't heard of that before. Will have to look into it, as I certainly don't want two 20 mtr cordylines sitting side by side in that corner .... though David thinks they might look quite spectacular, being one is green & one red!

I have a eucalyptus which can grow to 60'. I don't want that and i can trim it but I put it in a tub with the bottom cut away. The tub is sunk in to the ground so it is not visible to anyone looking at the garden. It is 2' across so should restrict the root growth significantly. It is only half the size of a similar one planted at the same time but not in a tub.

I was browsing through an online NZ nursery this morning & came across two red cordylines & both only grew to a relatively small size .... neither was the same as mine, but I am hoping like mad that it will be similar. Have not had the chance to pop down to the GC in town to check that out yet.