He may never taste the sweet fruit of his trees, but banana plants grow tall and strong for one Victoria man.
Marco Gagliani has crafted a near-tropical paradise in his urban yard with one tree growing particularly tall.
“I think it’s pushing 17 feet now,” he said. “The leaf is taller than me and I’m six feet tall.”
It won’t bear edible fruit, but the ambience of living in paradise is enough for Gagliani who enjoys time spent in Hawaii and Maui where the love of tropics is rooted.
“It was just a love of tropical plants,” he said. “I like to recreate what I would see and feel in a tropical climate; that’s my hobby,”
Visitors frequently ask for the secret to making them hit 15 to 17 feet. It’s expensive, but can be done, he says. This particular tree seems to get bigger every year, hitting 14 feet in 2023.
“It may not get any bigger next year but I’m sure going to try,” he said with a chuckle.
He hopes to inspire others who might be looking for a home-grown getaway.
“I want to show people you can do this and get that tropical feel in Victoria for at least a couple months a year in your back yard,” Gagliani said. “In the summer months we can replicate what’s going on in tropical areas.”
While the plants will grow and sprout fruit, those bananas don’t ever get to the point you can eat them.
“It starts too cool here, it doesn’t get warm enough,” Gagliani said.
The Japanese fibre banana – or Musa basjoo – plant is popular and fares well outdoors in the region, says Bob Duncan of Fruit Trees and More in North Saanich.
“This banana is quite hardy, it’s commonly grown outdoors on the south coast. It will flower and it will reduce bananas, but the bananas are not edible,” Duncan said.
That said, there are folks in the area who grow the fruit successfully – indoors.
“I do know people who are growing those as well, but they are all in greenhouses and those greenhouses are heated in the winter,” he said. “They have to be in a greenhouse to succeed and a heated greenhouse at that.”
But aside from the inedible fruit, outdoor banana trees on the south Island can provide leaves, which Duncan notes are a popular wrap for cooking over coals.
There are other successful tropicals that do fruit in the region, said Duncan, who has been growing subtropical Mediterranean tree fruits outside on the Peninsula for more than 40 years.
Duncan’s successes include citrus – with 30 years of tasty limes, lemons, oranges and mandarins – olives and his “most difficult children” are avocados and pomegranates.
“I don’t give up easy though,” he said.
Gagliani shows a similar stubbornness cultivating his city oasis, with windmill palms, hibiscus and other plants not common to the area.
“The downside is come winter, by the end of October, I’m going to have to winterize all these plants,” he said. “I have to protect them – building cages around them and stuffing them with leaves and insulation material so the frost doesn’t kill them. Others I have to take out of the ground and put them in a pot and put them in the basement.”
Then he does the reverse each spring.
