If you know of any locations where feijoas are growing in UK public parks would love to hear.
Feijoas in London
If you’re in or near London there are a few plants that fruit in public places as well as Kew Gardens.
Hyde Park / Kensington Gardens I haven’t been there since 2013, but there was one fruiting not far from Lancaster Gate tube station. The fruit hadn’t ripened when I was there, wish I could comment on size or taste. I’ve marked where it was, to the best of recollection, on the map below, if someone in London can check and let me know I’ll correct the map to the exact location. Also if anyone can help I really want to get some seeds from that plant. I wrote to the garden staff asking for cuttings but got no response.
Feijoa map – Hyde Park – Kensington Gardens
Thanks to Rochelle and Jason for confirming the plant is the right red dot on the map. The plant has just finished flowering end of August and there’s a few photos below. A big thanks for checking for all of us!
Kew Gardens – Last time I was there was in 2014, I sadly can’t remember exact location. It was growing against a red brick wall which makes me think either the Mansion or Kitchen Garden. If you do know or have a photo we can use on here we’d appreciate it. Would also love seeds from this plant too 😉.
Feijoas in South Hampton
I’ve heard mention that there are feijoas growing at Marwell Zoo. If someone down there can confirm that’d be great.
Know of any other locations?
Please let other feijoa lovers know where there may be other plants growing in the UK in the comments below.
Not the plant, going to try for one later in the year, but does anyone know if you can buy the sour feijoa sweets lollies in the UK
Hi Margaret, you can indeed. The very helpful website SANZA have them: https://www.sanza.co.uk/Mayceys_Sour_Feijoas.asp
SANZA 🙂
I have a feijoa tree growing in my garden. Will I need another to cross pollinate and bear fruit or are they self pollinating?
Hey Phil, a second tree is always better 😉 however most plants these days seem to be self fertile. I’ve found by having 2 trees from different sources you get better fruit set and larger fruit.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Gav
Hi! I have just discovered this site after having a conversation on SANZA’s Facebook page! We have two feijoa trees on our allotment and left three planted at our old house all in Bucks/Berks area. Also spotted a tree of pretty good size in Cotswold Wildlife Park! This summer we had the most flowers we have ever seen on our trees!
Thanks Sarah, great to have more trees around the country! You left 3 plants!!! Great for any kiwi that finds them 😃.
So glad you had lots of flowers, such fantastic news 😃. Sadly all new growth and most early flower buds were destroyed by the May frosts and only added flowers later in the year but no longer enough time to fruit. Very frustrating!
Cheers,
Gav
Hi Gav,
Sorry to hear about your I’ll health, hope the op isn’t delayed.
We have 3 feijoas grown from seed which possibly came from Chiltern seeds about 8 years ago. These are decent plants now but have not yet had a flower. Two are in a walled garden fairly close to the sea on the west coast of Southern Scotland and the other is in a town garden further inland. Is there anything we can do to encourage flowering?
Thanks,
Liz
Hi Liz,
thanks for the well wishes 😃.
South west Scotland with the Gulf Stream hitting it should be good for feijoas. Do you get many frosts in the walled garden? This year we lost all outdoor flower buds to the May frosts here, a few came later but didn’t have enough time to set fruit.
Where in the wall garden are the plants situated?
Are you pruning them and if so when?
Mulching in late September, early October (could probably still get in now) to keep heat in the ground and keep the snow off the roots is a great start.
Adding potash or Organic Lucerne/alfalfa Pellets in early spring should help with flowering, the pellets go a long way and work like a spring mulch as soon as they get wet and expand. What would be really helpful is “Yates Thrive 2.5kg Certified Organic Natural Sulfate Of Potash” but can’t find that outside NZ.
Hope you get flowers and fruit soon, I have had a few plants hit 7 or 8 years before flowering.
Cheers,
Gav
Hi Gav,
Thanks for the reply. I have found a compass and checked the aspect of out feijoas. Glad I did because my guesses were wrong. The town garden which gets plenty of frost is south east facing. It is beside a wall and gets shelter from prevailing winds. It is approx 7 foot tall and looks very healthy.
The 2 feijoas in the coastal walled garden face south and they get some but not a lot of frost or snow. They are of different varieties even though the seeds were from the same packet – the one with small leaves is about 4 foot tall and the other is about 5 foot. This garden had droughts this year and last (13 weeks this year) and the feijoas are at the edge of a rain shadow from the wall. We didn’t water them at all, still they seemed none the worse for it. The vegetation around them is pretty rampant so we will need to cut it back.
None of out feijoas have had any pruning or special treatment but having read your good advice realise that we have not been good to them. This will change and a mulch of well rotted farmyard manure has already been applied. Looking forward to flowers and fruit soon, thanks again.
for your expert help.
Liz
P s we manage to get a few very wee kiwi fruits outside this year.
Hi There
Great to see some UK Feijoa growing!
I’m based near Twickenham in Greater London and have been growing some trees in my garden for years.
One in particular produces a pretty good haul nowadays. here is a picture of what was probably about half of our total harvest.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/8pwP6wAvn54CGtvYA
Wish we could get more of the named cold weather varieties from NZ.
My Aunty took all the soil from some and tried to see if she could get through customs but sadly they blocked her so my mini orchard plan for the allotment couldn’t happen!
Biggest tip I have found is having a paint brush to go around pollinating while they flower makes all the difference here where the bird pollinators are different.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Dave,
that’s fantastic and did much better than us this year. The hard frosts in May destroyed this years crop and I’ve spent Saturday cleaning up the plants from sooty mould due to being weak from the frost damage. Hoping 2021 will bring better results. The plants are oddly still flowering but too late for fruit this year.
Agree with the paintbrush, I also use a makeup brush. The blackbirds and woodpigeons have found the flowers here and love the petals, still not as good as manual pollination though.
Cheers,
Gav