Thanks to support from the ESI/RANE Creative Exchange Programme, the microclimates of West Town Farm will be modelled and mapped by Dr Jonathan Bennie, an Associate Research Fellow at Exeter University’s Environment and Sustainability Institute. Jon is collaborating with artist Gabrielle Hoad on Foreign Soil, a documented attempt to grow dessert bananas outdoors at the farm.
Bananas are a tropical plant and need warm, moist, sheltered and frost-free growing conditions in which to produce their sweet, edible fruit. Using environmental monitoring, and applying the principles of permaculture to enhance existing growing conditions, Jon and Gabby will be looking for sites on the farm where where bananas and other tender crops might thrive.
As a start, Jon and Gabby have brought two banana plants (Dwarf Cavendish) to be raised in The Community Garden. Once established, these plants could quickly grow to around 2.4 metres high. They can live outside (with a little protection in colder months), but they will die back in the Devon winter and so probably won’t produce flowers and fruit until we can provide them with a cosier home. They will however produce off-shoots, which can be planted at other sites.
Foreign Soil is an art/science collaboration that asks what it means to eat local food and considers the future of UK food supplies. ESI/RANE is the research group of the University of Exeter’s Environment & Sustainability Institute and Falmouth University’s Research in Art, Nature and the Environment.
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/research/creativeexchangeprogramme/foreignsoil/
