Californian Redwood

The experience of walking under these giants of the plant world is both humbling and inspiring. A well known feature of Californian forests, but you don't have to travel to the U.S. to experience the vast cathedral-like pillars of the world's most gigantic tree. Victoria has two amazing (almost) mature forests, planted in the 1930s at Warburton and Beech Forest in the Otway Ranges. Slow to start, producing a lignotuber, the soft aromatic foliage then grows rapidly; up to 2 metres per year in well-watered fertile soils. Californian Redwoods can be grown in large gardens as their canopy is narrower than that of an oak. If you have room for an oak, then you can also fit 16 sequoias and create a redwood mini-forest in only 256sqm of ground. Very fast growth rate.