Go troppo with bananas

You may wonder why I'm thinking about bananas in the middle of winter but, actually, that's why. It's rained here for five days in a row so I'm yearning for something that'll make me feel a bit more tropical.

Having said that, I've never had much success with bananas. Oh, the Abyssinian variety grow like mad, of course and, in fact, we're always cutting them out. But the traditional tall varieties always look like someone vindictive has shredded the leaves and they languish in the garden looking more than halfway dead.

I once grew three of them inside in massive pots and they were stunning. Protected from the wind and the subject of my excessive attentions, they grew tall, straight, lush and undamaged until we moved house and the new place didn't have a high enough ceiling to accommodate them.

I transplanted them to the new garden where, needless to say, they collapsed from cold, wind and neglect.

A couple of years ago, a neighbour gave me a rather unusual variegated banana which I was determined to nurture, in case he should ever demand to know why I had neglected it. We were about to move house (again) so I planted it in a gorgeous, jade-coloured, glazed olive pot and carted it south with me to Waiheke Island.

At the first house we rented there, it sat grumpily on the deck and grew not a single millimetre. At the second house, it grew about a metre and looked stunning. We had to cut it off to bring it back home recently, but it's forgiven us and grown another metre, unfurling several deep maroon leaves in the past three or four weeks.

A knowledgeable eco-friend has identified it as Musa zebrine, the blood banana. The green leaves are splashed with rich mahogany-red on top, while the undersides are purple-red. A slim, 1.8m plant, it needs perfect shelter and dappled light to look its best, which explains my mixed results with it.

But it has encouraged me to grow bananas again and a bit of reading has shown there's one for every garden, be it a country estate or a tight, urban space in the city.

Musa velutina is a lovely thing if you like pink (I do), because it has striking pink flowers and velvety pink fruit in summer and autumn. It can be 2m tall in full sun but it will thrive in shade as well, where it will grow somewhat taller. The ripe fruit split to expose black seeds in white flesh, and while they look appetising, such is not the case - you'll only taste them once.

Musa mannii, the Indian dwarf banana, is another little one grown for its big heads of multicoloured flowers in shades of pink, orange and green. These will also grow and flower in a single season and form a dense, lush clump in about a year, generally reaching 1.5m by 1.5m.

Musa coccinea is from Thailand and has bright scarlet flowers which last several months. Beware if you have friends who are florists - they kill for them. This variety is a bit like my pot-dwelling indoor bananas - they need shelter and prefer to be nestled among other plants with a bit of shade. They're slender and more delicate in colder areas, and grow to about 1.5m.

If you're in a cooler, windy area, try the Musa bordelon. It's small, with tan-splashed leaves that have dark red undersides, and a lavender flower.

And for those who are really limited in terms of space, there's the Cavendish Super Dwarf, which is knee-high to a grasshopper, reaching only about 60cm. It's great for underplanting and is happy in dappled light.

Apart from growing them inside and fussing over them like mad, you can keep bananas looking good by removing the old stems as soon as the flowers and fruit are finished. Remove some of the young suckers to maintain the clump at the size you want, and feed frequently with chicken manure.

Make sure they're moist and keep them mulched. Keep yourself moist as well - there's nothing like a banana to make you feel you should have a tropical cocktail in your hand.