Gaye Mullin, from Waitara, Taranaki, has seen her succulent grow to crazy heights in her back yard.

Gaye Mullin has come to terms with the fact her almost 8-metre tall succulent is going to die.

"I think it is near the end now, going on the growth pattern... I'll be sad to see it go," she says of her "stairway to heaven".

Mullin's agave geminiflora has a stalk that's grown non-stop, at a very fast rate, but she was told when it flowers, it will die.

GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ The succulent is said to be on death row.

"Someone said to me, 'I have to tell you Gaye, it is going to die'," she said. "But it doesn't look like it."

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The succulent is said to only flower once in its lifetime and the stalk had been blooming for a while now, with its burgundy flowers and yellow stamens lighting up Mullin's Waitara garden, in Taranaki.

GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ A burgundy flower with yellow stamens presents itself "bit by bit".

And despite the fact the stalk is still growing – and had grown overnight – Mullin said it was slowing down.

"It seems to flower a bit, and they all die, and then the next bit comes out, and it sort of creeps up," she said. "I think it's had it now, going by the pattern on the petals."

She said it grew fastest overnight and still rose about 10 centimetres each night – however, in late February, it was growing about 15cm a night.

When Stuff spoke to Mullin on February 22, the succulent was about five-metres tall. Six days later it was a metre-and-a-half taller.

Mullin has received phone calls from all over the world since then, as people admire her "Waitara Wind Wand".

She said she would just let the succulent stalk "do its thing", rather than chopping it down if it died.

She could still laugh though, saying there was no way she was getting to heaven now.

"As I said, it's my stairway to heaven, 'cause I ain't going to get there any other way."

Mullin bought the plant in 2008 from the Ellerslie Garden Show when it was still held in Auckland. For years, it did nothing out of the ordinary, before it took off.

She said she had seen three agave geminiflora down near Waitara Beach, but they weren't half the size of hers, so she wasn't sure the Waitara climate was to thank or not for her plant's extraordinary growth.