It's all nana's to us!

Our banana's seem to be really thriving in our garden this year, must be the warm winter and really wet spring, maybe Lucien's excessive feeding regime. We have also expanded our species of banana in the past year or so.

In the front garden we have four different species of banana. We have a Musa sikkimensis that we got from Urban and Rural Plants in 2011. It has now over taken the Trachycarpus fortuneii in height.

We also have a Musa 'Yangtze', we got it from George at The Palm House, when we went to the Budleigh Plant Fair. It is currently quite small and is being swamped a bit by the surrounding plants.

We got a Musa 'Tibet' from Chad at the Rare Plant Fair at Tregrehan this year. This banana seems to be romping away and we are really impressed with it.

Last but not least, a Musa basjoo from Grub Hubbucks. This is a pup of the one we have in the back garden.

In the back garden, we have a Musa 'Mekong Giant', it seemed to take a little while to get it feet in the ground but now it has the leaves are pushing out fairly quickly.

The Musa basjoo from Grub Hubbucks is growing really well and doesn't appear to have the dwarf like growing habit that he does in Oxford.

These two banana's are a Musa sikkimensis (left) and a Musa basjoo (right), they are pups off other plants and are also growing at a fair rate.

As shown in the previous blog, our Ensete collection, Ensete maurellii 'Hiniba', Ensete maurelii, Ensete 'Tandarra Red'.

This Musa basjoo was the first basjoo that we had, it has never flowered yet because the winters have quite often knocked it back. We are hopeful this year.

We don't think we are doing too badly to say that we don't wrap or protect the banana's in winter, with the exception of the Ensetes which are always cosy in the conservatory.

Laura