It has been a frustrating exercise attempting to grow the NZ Christmas Tree > Metrosideros excelsa > Pohutukawa, here in the garden. I have tried multiple times in many different places around all the well sheltered prime spots. As it is native only to the coastal regions of the upper half of the North Island where there is very little frost, if at all, this isn’t particularly surprising. There are many terrific huge old trees on Tresco in the Scilly Isles and in A Coruna in NW Spain (Two images below), where the tree grows to huge proportions in ideal European conditions.

Then along comes M x subtomentosa Mistral which is a natural hybrid involving M excelsa and M robusta. So i thought it would be worth a try to grow a Metrosideros with half excelsa genes at least! And it has worked… This image shows the small tree growing in the entrance to the garden where it has been happily growing for the past 20 years without suffering any damage from cold spells. The flowers are an even deeper red colour than in the picture and are showing off right now in mid summer, just like they do in NZ. It has monstered the pot that it was planted in and definitely isn’t afraid to use its aerial roots to find a new home in the flowerbed next door…