PlantFiles: Monterey Pine
Pinus radiata

These are beautiful trees, but unfortunately I had to cut down our 50 foot one a year ago. It did well for twenty plus years, but in areas with less rainfall and or fog than they receive in their native area, the central coast of California, they go downhill over time. Although we are only four miles back from the beach in So. California our rainfall and fog are much less than Monterey. I would not consider them drought tolerant, particular over their lifetime. This was confirmed by several arborists over the eight years before we cut it down.

Without an extremely strong wind an increasing amount of dead needles continued to collect and it became an eyesore. Also, unfortunately it had been topped, :-( , at some time previous to our owing the property and had developed five large leaders which contributed to it's unattractive look.

Monterey pines grow fast into a graceful shape (see foto) and up to 100 feet according to Sunset Western Garden Book (more than you say). Developers like to use them for that reason. Trees planted from containers will most likely be rootbound, the tree will be shallow rooted and will suffer from high winds (danger of uprooting) as well as from pests (shallow roots may not supply trees with enough water and may cause a lethal invasion of bark beetles). We had four graceful adult trees and lost half of them within three years (one to bark beetles, other fell during a high wind), we were heartbroken to prune and top another one when its roots started to lift from the ground during a wind storm, pruned the last one a bit to let wind go through. These trees are very lovely but not carefree.