Hello, my name is Fran and live at the Sierra de Guadarrama, in the mountains of Madrid, Spain, at 1010 m / 3314 ft altitude, hardiness zone 8b (perhaps a bit optimistic..., but in my yard I only saw once the temperature dropping down to -10 ºC / 14 ºF, the lowest peaks are between -6 and -8 ºC / 17 and 21 ºF, in my particular place, facing Southwest in a mountain slope, we have a milder microclima than supossed, and we experience a sort of chinook that makes us to have warmer conditions here than at lower altitudes in the surroundings).
I have a small orchard full of fruits trees, from several ancient and modern apples, pears (I keep on looking for material to graft the classical Flemish late pear Winter Nélis, should anyone reading this happen to have it...: it was widely cultivated in the US as one of the most apreciated late pears, even its seedlings were used as rootstocks to graft other varieties on them), quincies, different edible service trees and hawthorns, plums, sloes, cherries, almonds, figs, alders, filberts, walnuts, pecans, jujubes and pistachios, to green and gold kiwis, hardy kiwis and different berries, and even a few tropicals of small size (in pots keeping them indoors and in a small greenhouse in winter) including mango, pitanga, a small and hopefully a bit hardy avocado (outspring of Mexicola), vanilla orchid, pitahaya, ginger, curcuma...
I professionnaly work in two main directions: Landscape and garden dessing and management (I also teach on that), as well as a practicing artist and art exhibitions organiser. I have been living in Germany (I studied there), the Canadian Rockies (Banff), the US (Southern Indiana and Southeastern Kansas) and travelling through differente places having short time residencies as artist in Kamchatka, Mauritius (where I ate those beautiful tiny, extra tasty buttery bananas), Japan, Chile, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland and creating gardens and ephemeral art installations in the nature in some of those countries).
Bananas...? I most recently got infected with the virus of growing bananas by a good friend from the Basque Country, who began himself with some hardy bananas, so I am new in this and ready to lern. By now I only have a young Helen's Hybrid planted outside and a couple of Super Dwarf Cavendish in pots, to overwinter inside (most probably they come from tissue culture, let's see if they survive...) and I am interested in dwarf edible hardy varieties suitable to grow here (more or less..) as Dwarf Orinoco and Dwarf Nam Wah, and other as Blue Java Ice Cream, Raja Puri... ¿and Dwarf Red Cuban...? as well as on those able to pollinate Helen's Hybrid: Hajaray or others.
So I will lern and enjoy very much this great forum. Privately I can correspond in English, German, French or Spanish and can read Portuguese with pleasure, but for the open posts I will keep on English though, of course.
Best regards everybody !
Fran
