Banana trees thrive in the mountains of Unaka
By Dwight Otwell Editor

DWIGHT OTWELL/Sentinel photo Mary Jo Dockery is proud of her 35 banana plants. In this photo taken on the first of November, the plants are starting to feel the stress of the cold, but they last all winter if cut off at the base and covered.

It's time for Mary Jo Dockery's banana plants to go to sleep.

Her 35 banana plants aren't at a winter home in sub-tropical south Florida. They grow on the 104 acres where she and husband Kenneth Lester Dockery live in Unaka. The plants were still healthy and strong looking on November 1 but with the recent sub-freezing weather, she cuts the plants near the base and covers them with straw or hay so that they will sleep the long winter away and be ready to revive in the spring. Some of the trees even produce bananas, although the growing season isn't long enough for the trees to provide a large harvest of the yellowskinned food.

A neighbor, Frank Gore, sent her two banana plants three years ago. But Mary Jo had banana plants as long ago as 1998.

The banana plants will also last all winter if she digs them up, wraps them in black plastic and sets them out again in the spring.

DWIGHT OTWELL/Sentinel Photo The trees actually produce bananas.

Twenty-three of the banana trees are on one side of her pond. She plans to have enough of the plants to go all around the pond.

"I keep transplanting the new banana plants," she said. "They will come back if you cover them over and shield them from the cold."

Mary Jo has lived her entire life in Unaka. She was a Graves until she married Buddy Sutton, who died in 1998.

Kenneth worked for Northwestern Airlines for 34 years and the couple live on his old, home place.

Tourists driving our scenic countryside in the summer may do a double take when they spot banana trees in rural Unaka at Cooper Creek and Beaverdam Road.