Southland
I always wondered why anyone from down here would bother nurturing a plant that seemed so out of place in this cool region.
Grow bananas in Southland? Yes you can, says Robert Guyton.
Bananas need so much cossetting just to stay alive, let alone fruit; that is until the moment I was gifted a plant and held the tattered thing in my hands. In that instant, I realised I had begun a journey, a relationship perhaps, with a new and unfamiliar member of the plant community, and that I’d have to change my thinking and raise my standard of care if I was to take this tropical herbaceous perennial, for that is how the banana is categorised, to fruition.
There are very few bananas growing in Southland. Those that have found themselves in the temperate south are inside a conservatory or glasshouse and thankful, I imagine, for that shelter from the elements which can be very different from those experienced where bananas are most often found.
I had to do some reading in order to understand what I was dealing with in a banana. They’re not trees, nor are they palms, I discovered, and they won’t bear seed-filled fruits, meaning keeping them going for more than one brief round of growth and fruiting means multiplying them by offshoots, or pups, which spring from the plant’s base as the main stem expires. All of these things will be hoha to growers from the north to whom bananas are commonplace, but not for me, the inexperienced banana-grower from well south of the Bombay Hills.
I learned the plant likes moisture both in the soil and in the air, so I mist mine with a handheld hose every day. They’re hungry herbs too, I found, and mine is planted on a generous reservoir of a matured rabbit poo and hay mixture, and regularly doused with warmed liquid seaweed tea and other nitrogenous brews that encourage vigorous leaf growth.
At this stage, both of us are very happy: new leaves are quickly appearing and
I’m excited by the rate of growth shown by this banana.
Those leaves erupt from the centre of what could be described as a trunk, but doesn’t look like that of an ordinary tree; more a tightly curled collection of past and future leaves, and once unfurled, look quite different from anything that grows in the outdoors here. I’ve seen pictures of bananas in groves and those enormous leaves look quite tattered – from the tropical winds, I’m guessing – but mine’s under protective cover and may not shred the way the plantation banana leaves do.
To add to the excitement of hosting this hot climate beauty, I’ve found myself in receipt of other plants that complement it perfectly.
This is thanks to, oddly enough, the pandemic and the disappearance of overseas visitors from the tourist scene.
Now that tourism is a domestic thing, New Zealanders are spending their holiday time travelling through their own country and Aucklanders, in particular, are turning up at my gate for tours of my forest garden. They’re very welcome of course, and many of them have arrived bearing plants from the north – plants that need a hothouse in which to live, so that way I’ve been able to build a community of heat-loving plants without visiting my local nursery or trawling the Internet for exotics. One extra-thoughtful woman from our largest city brought me a clump of false cardamom ( Alpinia nutans) that I knew nothing about, until I looked it up.
It sounds the perfect accompaniment for my banana and fits in stylistically with the Thai ginger, or galangal (lesser, rather than great galangal, I’m thinking, based on my very limited knowledge of this family of plants. It may simply be smaller here because of the cooler temperatures. I’ll wait until a galangal expert visits; they’ll know the difference).
I’ve also plenty of canna lilies now, with their complementary growth characteristics and leaf shapes to reflect the banana theme; their various colours add a lot of visual excitement as well, and the scores of calla lily seeds I sowed over winter have struck without fail and are now handsome young plants, waiting their chance to grow in the big tunnelhouse. I’ve no idea whether they’re going to enjoy the higher temperatures but it won’t take long to find out. Calla lilies grow readily out of doors in Southland but I get the impression they might like a more humid, heated atmosphere just as much as they enjoy the cool.
I’m thinking also about snails.
They have never been a problem in my garden. In fact, I’ve never seen one here but they do live elsewhere in Riverton. I’m wondering if, by providing all of these luscious leaves – banana, cardamom, galangal, canna and calla, not to mention the dozens of hosta I’ve planted – I might be inviting trouble in a slime-footed, thin-shelled form that will keep me awake at night with worry. We shall see.