Some pictures I've taken recently in this great summer we're having here in Torbay!

 

 Early Morning at Torquay Marina

 Along The Bottom of Rock Walk

 The Car Park at Torquay Marina & The English Riviera Wheel

 Torquay Promenade

 Palm Tree

 

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 Catamaran Marina

Workmen

 

 Terrace Steps at Rock Walk

 New Palms Planted on Hillside

Palm Tree Being Moved Last Week (picture courtesy: torbay environmental services)

 

Palm Tree Growing Out Of A Chimney Stack (Torbay Palms will grow anywhere!)

 

Torquay Beach

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Grand Images.   Grand Place...

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Thanks Art, its definately an interesting place to take pictures, I wouldn't get bored!

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Great pics Larry of the palm trees, wouldn't look out of place somewhere in the Med! lol

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We're very fortunate to have the climate that we have here in the bay, people who don't understand the way climate works wonder why you can grow palms when its not hot like on the continent but of course the reason is not the heat but that we rarely experience any real cold. An interesting fact about being this far down on the SW peninsula is that we are closer to Santander than we are to Inverness. 484 miles to Santander, Biscay is only 131 miles away. One of the palms that does very well in the UK especially in areas where it doesn't or rarely drops below -10c is Trachycarpus Fortunei you can see one in the fifth picture down and see the new smaller one's planted on the hillside. This does great especially in the south and is very hardy being a mountain palm and used to precipitation and cool temperatures. One of the things that we were encouraged to do back in the 90's and earlyier in the 2000's was plant Cordyline Australis (Torbay Palms) which are absolutely fine here in Torbay and most coastal resorts even the milder Scottish coastal locations but not too good when the deep cold arrives for those living inland because they die. It would have been much better to tell people to grow Yucca. Yucca Gloriosa and Yucca Gloriosa Variegata can take -20c without any leaf damage, thats the kind of exotic most people in the UK could grow. And they look great too!

 

Yucca Gloriosa Variegata with its beautiful yellow leaf edges is suitable for most UK gardens.

 

We're due to have some semi-mature date palms planted outside a new building very soon and I will upload pictures when that happens.

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Great it is! Tonnes of sunshine, scorchingly so in June, only the odd hours or two here and there you could call 'cool', even today when it's been cloudy its shirt sleeve and comfortably warm.

Nicely capturing the feel of it btw.

Certainly the best summer for a while although we are lucky that over the last few years it hasn't been as bad as some other parts of the country. I think the thing about this year so far has been how much usable weather there as been as its been very dry. This morning I noticed the local ponds on the seafront where very low and the stream feeding the pond near the Grand Hotel is down to a trickle which is a little worrying for the wildlife.

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Going through some posts as I have some spare time and found this South West England location. Very evocative too.

Palm trees have become popular in their various hardy forms but I suppose the south west has always had the monopoly on their use in the UK apart from that place in Scotland. It seems you are having as better summer this year though which must be great. We have been out of the UK since March and it's tipping down this afternoon with a typhoon going over Manila.

Great for botanical pics though as the light is soft which is not always the case in the tropics.

Nick

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Its true that although they have always been grown here in the bay at least since the 1820's so nearly 200 years now they have become increasingly popular in non coastal gardens and even in places that are not exactly known for their mild winters. Trachycarpus Fortunei (Chusan Windmill palm) from Burma, Nepal, Chusan Island, etc is probably the most popular hardy palm for the UK although once its got over its younger years Jubaea Chilensis (Chilean wine Palm) is super hardy and probably wins hands down over all the palms that we grow over here. I mentioned a few posts back that if people in the UK want to grow exotics a good choice would be Yucca, at least with Yucca you can have that exotic look and feel almost anywhere considering how hardy it is and it looks fantastic. Very popular here in the South West!

Philippines sounds interesting makes me think of fields of banana, some of those banana plants grow very well here and it is becoming increasingly popular although at a slower rate than other palms. One good thing about those banana is that if they get cut down in a bad winter which they often do they will grow back to full size by the next summer and they give the place a very tropical look much more than any of the other palms which are mostly European/North african and South America.

Yes we are a having a great summer this year and unlike yourself not much rain at all although that might all be about to change this weekend with the possibility of some big storms. Thanks for the comment, & stay safe!

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Plenty of palm trees here where we are now and also of course banana plants. Not so popular here for food as they have the stigma of being seen as famine food. The red skinned ones are delicious though and there are green skinned varieties
that are good even if they look unripe. Our son in the UK had what his headteacher called a long discussion when he contradicted her when she talked about banana trees. He of course insisted bananas do not grow on trees. I see even
the BBC make this fundamental mistake from time to time too.

That’s the pedantic botanist/agriculturist in me I suppose.

Nick

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I tried to grow a few palms here over the years but living in a valley prone to hard frosts it killed them, will try to get some hardy ones and see how they fare, will be interesting in that respect as we got down to almost -18C twice in 2010 with a foot of snow covered on "evergreens"......... so I'll see how hardier palms fare being entombed in thick ice!... when we get get a nasty Winter again.

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Hi NMA I hope the typhoon didn't do too much damage and cause loss of life I say that because I haven't read the news I try to stay away from it because I don't want to be depressed so I don't know what happened. I hope everyone is OK. Thanks for telling the funny story about your son I never really knew whether to call them plants, palms, or trees. So I guess they're plants that grow to tree size. There's something that I suppose a lot of people don't know about and that is that almost every banana bought in the supermarket is a clone! Yes it sounds weird but a few decades ago the banana people didn't like the fact that they all grow in different sizes which made it hard to package them so they cloned a few certain varieties and all banana plantations nowadays grow these clones. Its the predictability that works well for the corporation like Chiquita etc. Those red one's sound good probably the reason why they would never be sold here in supermarkets is because the banana people are not interested even though they are nice there's no money in it. Its clones and thats the way big business works.

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Try Yucca. You will not be disappointed. But if you want to try a palm as well go with Trachycarpus Fortunei. You can pick both up at B&Q.

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