Growing bananas has given me the peel-good factor!

PHILIP AMAZED TO SEE PLANT BEAR FRUIT IN SUNNY RADFORD

- By GEORGE PALMER-SOADY

WE successfully produce many varieties of fruit here in England, but the last thing you'd expect to see in a garden in Radford would be a bunch of bananas growing.

Yet, thanks to an unusually hot and long summer and a bit of good luck, a Nottingham man has successfully grown the tropical fruit in his garden.

Philip Gurnam Singh picked up the banana plant when visiting the weekly market in his childhood home of Hyson Green in the summer of 2018 but was unaware what fruit it would eventually produce.

"I picked up this small plant I didn’t know what it was but decided to grow it and kept it in my loft until it had overgrown the pot I'd put it in," the 60-year-old explained.