Well, as I was saying, I tried to grow a pomegranate tree in London.  The bush grew but the pomegranates didn’t.

But someone has had more success than me.  The picture shows a pomegranate tree with fruit ripening on it in Richmond in south west London.

It’s a hobby of mine to track down fruit trees, both ordinary and exotic, in unusual, urban places.  I’ll be posting more — but would love to hear if anyone else has found incongruous and beautiful fruit trees like this —

Or like this banana tree, which will never provide an actual banana but that may grow as tall as a house in a London street.  I have planted and looked after at least a dozen such banana trees since coming here to England.  Sometimes, I have coddled and nurtured them through the winter.  At other times, I have left them to their own devices.  No matter what, they have never lasted more than a season or two, which has made me extremely jealous of some of the whopping great banana trees I see proud and happy and unprotected in several front gardens near me in west London.

I have also tried several times with lemon trees outdoors — kumquats and oranges too.  These normally do quite well — with edible fruit actually growing on them and a wonderful, intoxicating scent until I go too far and leave them to fend for themselves through our deceptively mild winters that still manage to turn savage for enough days to kill them. 

Even so, there is still enough fruit or blossom to turn an ordinary summer drink into something exotic, worthy of being drunk on an old Ottoman balcony above a fountain and a frangipani tree in one of the few remaining dusty old forgotten streets in Ras Beirut.