Banana bonanza sprouts in London back garden “due to climate change”

A bonanza of bananas has sprouted in a London back garden due to climate change.

Caroline Williams, 65, now has fruit growing on two of her 12 foot high banana trees, only the second or third time they have produced fruit in the 20 years she's had them.

She says theJapanese Musa basjoo plants, nicknamed ‘hardy banana plants' have fruited due to a summer of high temperatures and heavy rain.

She believes they didn’t sprout during the heatwave summer of 2020 because it was too hot and dry.

Royal Horticultural Society experts have said it is rare for the bananas to sprout in the UK because it is too cool.

A friend prompted Ms Williams to buy one banana plant at the Urban Garden Show at Olympia, London, in 2004.

The Londoner didn’t believe the approximately 16-inch sucker would survive in the UK.

But two decades later the single plant in her Chiswick garden has turned into eight, the tallest of which measures over 13 feet.

Retired television commercial producer Ms Williams said she chops them down to around three feet every winter.

During the colder months she covers them with a fleece, to protect the leaves from splitting in the wind and shield them from frost.

They always shoot back up again over spring and summer, she said.

Ms Williams put her success down to a wall surrounding her garden, keeping heat in and wind out.

Figs, olives and tree ferns grow alongside the bananas.

She said: “Unfortunately they’re not edible, even though we’ve just had a fantastic spell of heatwave, they don’t really ever get enough sun in this country.

“It’s healthier than they’ve been before actually.”

Her landscape gardener friend suggested she buy the plants.

Ms Williams recalled: “I said ‘Oh for God’s sake, they’ll never survive in this country.’ She said ‘no, they’re hardy bananas, and they do.’

“They were baby, baby, babies."

The trees keep propagating, she said.

“Now, the banana tree fruits and within a month or so it dies - so we’ve got several stubs around the garden.

“Tragically we have to dig them out, or leave them, but they always plant little babies there. Somehow the babies keep coming up.

“We have six, but I only had one originally. I could set up a little banana nursery.

“I have tree ferns, a fig tree, and olive trees, and all these sorts of things. I thought, gosh, it must be because of climate change that all these plants actually survive now.

“It was such a lovely heatwave, we haven’t got the seaside here - people post constantly beautiful pictures of the Thames. I thought we don’t see enough of our inland nature.”

The Musa basjoo fruits are used to make textiles in Japan. They are small, green, and inedible, unlike the yellow bananas available at British supermarkets.

She has lived in the Bedford Park area of Chiswick, west London for 31 years.