Pride of Madeira

I saw this wonderful plant in Madeira on our holiday a few weeks ago, Echium candicans. Obviously a must have in the PJ garden. I immediately started growing some seedlings which are now around five inches tall.
Just got around to looking up some information on the plant, and it turns out to be tender, obviously, and a biennial!
Which means that it will attain the height of 1.5 metres by next summer, flower and die!
However I do not believe this as the ones we saw in Madeira were at least 2 metres tall and extremely woody stemmed so not biennial at all.
I returned to my research and found a chat page that said they can be short lived perennials, which is more to my liking.
Don't know what I will do about the tender thing though....
Wish me luck!