UK olives sign of warming times

HONITON, DEVON - In one of the most remarkable signs yet of the advance of global warming, Britain's first olive grove has just been planted in Devon.

Temperatures have risen so far in recent years that it is now considered possible to grow the iconic fruit of the Mediterranean countries commercially in southern England.

Several studies have suggested that in decades to come olives, vines and other warm-climate plants will be likely to flourish in a substantially warmer Britain, yet this has hitherto seemed a fairly distant prospect.

Now, however, a Devon smallholder has taken the plunge, and in partnership with an Italian olive specialist, planted a grove of 120 olive trees on the banks of the River Otter near Honiton.

Mark Diacono, who is establishing a "climate change farm" on his land, fully intends his olives to be a commercial crop which will produce Britain's first home-grown olive oil, in perhaps five to seven years. He has planted them in co-operation with an Italian gardener living in England, Emilio Ciacci, who has provided the trees from the hills near his home at Maremma, in Tuscany.

A 39-year-old environmental consultant, Diacono has no doubt that UK temperatures are becoming suitable. "There's no question that the climate is going to get there. It's just, have I done this 10 years too early or 20 years too early? But I don't think so. We don't need to turn into Portugal, we just need it to be slightly warmer for longer, and we are making that shift."

His rows of young trees with their distinctive grey-green leaves look incongruous in the red Devon earth, with oakwoods in the background, in place of the glittering blue of the Mediterranean, lapping the shores of Spain, Italy or the Greek Islands.

Since 1900, the average temperature in Britain has risen by about 1degC, and the growing season has lengthened by about a month. The temperature is rising by between 0.15degC and 0.2degC per decade, but the rate itself will increase, and by the 2020s the climate will be nearly another full degree warmer than the average of 1961-1990.

The UK Climate Impacts Programme expects very hot and dry summers of the sort Britain experienced in 1995 will strike in one in three years by the 2050s. Maximum temperatures in southern counties, such as Berkshire, which now reach about 34degC, will start to exceed 40degC. By 2080, southeast England could become on average 5C warmer in summer, making it as hot as Bordeaux now.

- INDEPENDENT