It’s time to go bananas

They are the perfect tropical plant for cool climes

It’s a question I always dread: what’s your favourite plant? With an estimated 400,000 species to pick from, talk about a tough choice. But if I absolutely had to grow just one group of garden plants, it would be the hardy banana.

Despite finding their centre of diversity in the lowland tropics of south-east Asia, there are several banana species from the northerly (and especially high-altitude) edges of their range that experience significant levels of frost, and a climate on a par with that of many areas of Britain. The classic example of this is the Japanese hardy banana, Musa basjoo, which actually hails from Sichuan in China and has been recorded as being “root hardy” to as low as -20C if kept dry. So even when the above-ground section of the plant is turned to mush by freezing temperatures below -5C, it is capable of regenerating from energy stores in underground corms the following spring.

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It’s time to go bananas

They are the perfect tropical plant for cool climes

It’s a question I always dread: what’s your favourite plant? With an estimated 400,000 species to pick from, talk about a tough choice. But if I absolutely had to grow just one group of garden plants, it would be the hardy banana.

Despite finding their centre of diversity in the lowland tropics of south-east Asia, there are several banana species from the northerly (and especially high-altitude) edges of their range that experience significant levels of frost, and a climate on a par with that of many areas of Britain. The classic example of this is the Japanese hardy banana, Musa basjoo, which actually hails from Sichuan in China and has been recorded as being “root hardy” to as low as -20C if kept dry. So even when the above-ground section of the plant is turned to mush by freezing temperatures below -5C, it is capable of regenerating from energy stores in underground corms the following spring.

Continue reading...

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Void periods and how to avoid them Nottingham Estate Agents

Landlords naturally get a bit twitchy at the thought of their properties being empty and unlet for any length of time. But the savviest landlords know that it is possible to avoid void periods altogether, or at least keep them to an absolute minimum, with one tenancy following seamlessly on from another. If you dread […]

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Falling in and out of love with roses | Allan Jenkins

This summer, a swooning, prolific bloom has finally charmed my wife, but I’m confused by a changeling

Henri has finally fallen in love with the Rosa x odorata ‘Bengal Crimson’. She was at first impervious to its charms. It has an oddly elusive scent for its name, with the dusky, cherry-coloured flowers suggested, like a lipstick a 1950s film star might wear. An Ava Gardner flower.

It was a gift from Howard, bought back from Great Dixter; a tender-seeming plant, single-flowering, skinny-stemmed, sometimes swooning, as though overwhelmed with the weight of roses. Its loose petals loll around as though exhausted from blooming through much of the winter and still pumping out new flowers, repeatedly. It doesn’t appear to have thorns. But as it has grown on Henri, it has filled out, tripling in size, maybe more, this year.

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Falling in and out of love with roses | Allan Jenkins

This summer, a swooning, prolific bloom has finally charmed my wife, but I’m confused by a changeling

Henri has finally fallen in love with the Rosa x odorata ‘Bengal Crimson’. She was at first impervious to its charms. It has an oddly elusive scent for its name, with the dusky, cherry-coloured flowers suggested, like a lipstick a 1950s film star might wear. An Ava Gardner flower.

It was a gift from Howard, bought back from Great Dixter; a tender-seeming plant, single-flowering, skinny-stemmed, sometimes swooning, as though overwhelmed with the weight of roses. Its loose petals loll around as though exhausted from blooming through much of the winter and still pumping out new flowers, repeatedly. It doesn’t appear to have thorns. But as it has grown on Henri, it has filled out, tripling in size, maybe more, this year.

Continue reading...

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A tale of two cities, New York style meets London chic

Art is given centre stage in a designer’s bright monochrome apartment

Carl Blücher sits in his trademark baseball cap and eye-poppingly bright trainers, his friendly miniature dachshund, Mr Big, on his knee in his New-York-loft-inspired east London flat. When the new Whistles creative project manager bought the compact flat in an Edwardian mansion block 13 years ago, the original dining room was being used as a third bedroom and the kitchen was tucked away at the back. “It felt very small, dark and boxy,” says Blücher, “but I could see that the proportions of the rooms were good.”

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A tale of two cities, New York style meets London chic

Art is given centre stage in a designer’s bright monochrome apartment

Carl Blücher sits in his trademark baseball cap and eye-poppingly bright trainers, his friendly miniature dachshund, Mr Big, on his knee in his New-York-loft-inspired east London flat. When the new Whistles creative project manager bought the compact flat in an Edwardian mansion block 13 years ago, the original dining room was being used as a third bedroom and the kitchen was tucked away at the back. “It felt very small, dark and boxy,” says Blücher, “but I could see that the proportions of the rooms were good.”

Continue reading...

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