Garden Designers & Landscape Gardeners
Garden Buildings in South & East England

Musa basjoo.
Of all the tropical looking plants, seen here in the Tropic Of Henstead , the 'Hardy Banana' provokes the most amazement when we tell clients that it is possible to grow them here in the sunny UK! People have become accustomed to the fact that we can grow palms and bamboo here but they are still amazed that they can grow bananas here, and they will even bear fruit, and no they don't need winter protection!

Left - growing in the Old Vicarage Garden in East Ruston, Norfolk. This clump has one trunk that has flowered which will now die. All of the trunks here will eventually flower and die but as you can see in the foreground there are younger plants growing which will keep this clump going.
Right - it is normal for the leaves of all Musa species to develop tears in their leaves which are too soft and delicate to stay whole in any but the most sheltered areas. It is possible to minimise the 'shredded' look by plantingthem in a microclimate as seen in the pictures below of the clump in the Carribean Home From Home.
Marvelous right photo by emagen on flickr.com, see their link on our Resources Page.

This remarkable plant, will survive most UK winters without protection. Usually it will simply lose its leaves like a deciduous plant, keeping its trunk to start re growing from the same height next season. In a bad winter the trunk may be frozen and the growing tip will be killed in the top of the trunk. This does not mean the end of the plant though, it is hard to imagine a winter with sustained -10 or 12c in the UK now that would kill the root system of this banana. If the trunks are frozen it will simply re grow from ground level the next spring, usually with multiple shoots. The hardy nature of this plant is due to its origin in the wild, in colder parts of China where it regularly experiences frost.