Here we have a wonderfully bushy species that appears to be a #gunnii type. It might be a standard gunnii that is exceptionally well pruned, or it might be one of the popular dwarf varieties such as Azura or Silverana. Gunnii is a very hardy species that grows pretty much anywhere, even in Scotland. It is also quite easy to grow and train, which is why you will almost always find it in your local garden centre. Some sellers are a bit unethical in their marketing, and will describe it as reaching 10 meters. It will reach 10 meters, on the way to being 25 meters tall! Without a label it can be very difficult to differentiate between different gunnii types, the best indicator will be growth rate – gunnii can grow two meters in a year!

In the same part of the Eden Project we also have this lovely Eucalyptus crenulata. The eucalyptus in these photographs are interesting because they dispel the long standing myth that you can’t plant anything underneath eucalyptus trees. I’ll be writing a much longer blog post on common eucalyptus myths soon, but the idea that a eucalyptus will somehow poison the soil around it just isn’t true. Some species of tree such as Yew are capable of allelopathy (producing biochemicals to suppress the growth of competing plants), but none of the eucalyptus that are capable of growing in the UK appear to have this trait. Indeed, in the early years after planting it is usually a bigger challenge to suppress any weeds around a newly planted eucalyptus. I suspect that this myth arose because of observations that the ground flora is quite limited in eucalyptus plantations and forests. This is because eucalyptus are similar to native species like beech, in that they are very effective at closing the canopy and taking up all the available light. This is much less of a problem when you have a single eucalyptus in your garden.