Red, Green, and Blue

Mike Hilliard is no ordinary gardener. He’s the Managing Director of his own property development firm and an environmental architect. His banana plants are the variety musa japonica, and they’ve been living in the solar room which enriches the oxygen in the Hilliard family home, Tranquility, often described as the most energy-efficient house in the world. It has total energy costs of just £150 ($300) per year.

The bananas are not going to be turning up in British brown bag lunches any time soon - they are unpalatable when raw and contain seeds, also they may not ripen fully because light levels in a British winter are probably inadequate - but when cooked like plantains they are a potassium rich food and a tasty ingredient in South Asian curry recipes. The Royal Horticultural Society confirmed that he is the only person in Britain known to have grown bananas domestically. The five metre tall plants have borne four hands of fruit containing about 70 bananas.

Accelerating climate change causes horticultural surprises

While the eco-home could be considered a micro-climate, Mike Hilliard believes that the growth of the bananas is evidence that the scientific community’s findings about global warming are just wrong. He claims the problem is much more advanced than accepted wisdom suggests.

Energy saving a government focus

Ed Miliband, the recently appointed Secretary for Energy and Climate Change has recently announced that Britain will increase its 2050 target for reducing emissions from 60 per cent of 1990 levels to at least 80 per cent. He said that climate changes were ‘happening much quicker than we anticipated or even feared a few years ago’ and that it was therefore ‘right to step up the pace.’ Unfortunately, the pace seems to have side-stepped the Government’s official Energy Saving Week in October which passed with virtually no national awareness because the media focus was on energy costs, not energy saving. However draft proposals have been presented to the Minister which aim to reduce energy wastage from Britain’s housing stock which is currently responsible for 27% of the entire country’s emissions of carbon dioxide. So perhaps by 2050 we’ll all be growing bananas in our energy efficient homes?

Traditional banana flower courtesy of cornstaruk at Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence

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