Dick Douglas garden

[iwan]

Last weekend I had the opportunity to tour Dick's garden. This is the most mature private palm garden that I have toured (outside of the tropics) and is an excellent example of a California zone 9 hardy garden.  In spite of our brutal freeze in January and another freeze last December with lows down to the low 20's, very few of Dicks palms show any damage or even signs of stress.

A lot of the palms have been in the garden 30-40+ years.  The layout reminds me of a small scale version of the Huntington Botanical Garden with grass (Dick said they were irregated weeds) pathways leading you through islands of palms.  

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You will know Dick as PalmGuyWC here, and some of you have personally known him for decades.  Dick hasn't mastered posting pictures yet, so I will be posting my pictures with his comments included.  I will make no further comments in this thread until after all the pictures are posted so that there is no confusion (hopefully) as to who the comments belong to.

Now, on to the pictures.

[iwan]

"Butia X Parajubaea cocoides......Took 23F and many nights of below freezing and frosted with thick, white frost....absolutely no damage."

"Butia X Parajubaea, detail of fiberous trunk and unarmed petioles."

"Fried Bismarkia, only a few feet from the Butia X Parajubaea. My only fatality from the freeze."

"Parajubaea Torallyi Torallyi.....50% damaged by the freeze, but already growing and will recover."

[iwan]

"Tracheycarpus wagneranus...a young plant."

"Phoenix Sp. from India..not sure of the identity."

"My most beautiful Butia, what we believe to be B. Yata. The seed came from Argentina. It holds many fronds, the leaf blades are narrow, and it gets very silver in the warmer months."

"An old Butia capitata.  It has very long petioles and doesn't hold as many fronds as the other Butias."

[iwan]

"Another robust Butia capitata...holds many fronds, bottom part of unripe fruit is red.  We call it "Rainbow". "

"Chamaedorea hybrid.....C. Oreophila X radicalis.  Described in Hodel's book as "Douglas Delight". "

"Jubaea chilensis, the early blooming one where most of the recent hybrids have come from that has a Jubaea parent. It's been blooming for about 8 years while none of the other 3  have bloomed."

"Phoenix hybrid, resembles P. canariansis, but smaller and more tender to cold than P. canariansis. The large trunk to the right is a Butiagrus."

[iwan]

"Another clustering Phoenix hybrid."

"Brahea brandegeii, the most cold sensitive of my Braheas.  It looks pretty ratty now after 23F, but should look good by the end of summer. "

"Sabal sp....identity unknown "

"Mystery sabal, thought to be a super strain of S. etonia.  It's tough, has thick lethery fronds, super cold hardy."

[iwan]

More pictures tomorrow.

[Kris]

Dear Robert  

thanks for those beautiful stills & for the tour..

Love,

Kris.

[paulgila]

great pics!amazing mature palms--especially those jubeas!indah sekali

[SubTropicRay]

Very nice.  The Jub is breathtaking.

[Nigel]

oh wow what a treat that was.......... cant wait for chapter 2

[elHoagie]

Very nice, thanks!

[Jeff Searle]

Dick,

   You have a fantastic collection of palms. Not tropical, but the cold hardy ones that we can't grow there. I wish we could grow some of them here.

   And Iwan, thanks for posting all the pics, enjoyed them all.

Jeff

[Zac in NC]

Thanks for sharing these.

Zac

[NCpalmqueen]

I don't know who Dick is, but that garden is fabulous.  Now that is what I call a real tropical garden!  Thanks for sharing.

[iwan]

"Garden view, mostly Chamaerops. "

"Giant Butiagrus on left, Jubaea on right."

"My smallest Jebaea...it gets partial shade and has competition."

"Trachycarpus martianus "

[iwan]

"Parajubaea cocoides....Can't see from the photo, but it was severely damaged in the recent freeze....75% of the fronds burned at 23F.  It will recover but will take 2 or 3 years if there are no more hard freezes.  Anything below 25F. expect damage.  The large trunk behind it is the Butaigrus on steroids."

"A grove of Trac. wagneranus "

"Nannorrhops"

"Brahea elegans (We think) "

[iwan]

"The very rare Trithrinax biflabellata.  This plant is only about 3.5 feet high and 17 years old. It has divided into 6 heads."

"Trithrinax campestrus, over 35 years old from a 1 gal plant.  Super hardy to cold and heat."

"another Nannorrhops, partly shade grown "

[iwan]

"A group of Chamaedorea radicalis, mostly volunteers.  I started with 4 plants."

"The mutant Chamaerops "

"(Jubaea X Butia) X Syagrus.  Fast growing, heavier texture than Butiagrus, and going in the ground this spring.  Should be very cold hardy being part Jubaea. "

"Chamaedorea hybrid showing several flower spikes from one node. (Cham. oreophila X radicalis) The plant is in a container and growing in "dead dirt" and would have a much fuller head if in the ground.  It's going in this spring. "

[paulgila]

the pics just keep getting better!so much time in all these plants.makes one feel insignificant in the grand

scheme of things ???

[iwan]

"A compact Trithrinax campestris.....it has "stubby" trunks and about a dozen heads. It's been fruiting for several years. Very dangerous to get near."

"Two Butias, and I don't know what they are, but both different from each other and the other ones I have. Note the canvas bag in the upper right hand corner on a Syagrus, one of Patricks hybridising projects. "

"Jubaea X Butia cross, Probably the best known one on the West Coast.  Many hybrid seeds have come from this tree. The Europeans went nuts over it when they visited here about 8 years ago, and photos of it have been published in various journals and web sites."

"Another view of the hybrid.  As you can see it has a very thick trunk, and a nice blue/gray color. "

[iwan]

"Trithrinax acanthocoma in fruit."

"Livistona diciepiens. It took years for it to push above the Trachycarpus growing around it.  Now with it's head in the sun, it's really taking off."

[iwan]

"I couldn't resist throwing this in.  I have a lot of these, to many."

[Alicehunter2000]

Us zone 9ers are loving this. I think this is the most extensive cold hardy mature planting I have seen. Those Jubea are truly impressive alas only for your dry climate

[iwan]

That is it for Dick's choices.  He was concerned about boring you.  Tomorrow, I will post a few of my choices.

[Charles Wychgel]

Great shots and a fine example of a "cool" palmgarden!

That Nannorrhops is grreat must be really old.

[Exotic Life]

Thanks for sharing this pics, they are great!

Robbin

[Carlo Morici]

Was Dick the one who grew the once very rare split leaf form of Chamaedorea metallica in California, and then gave seeds/seedlings to Paul Drummond in Miami? Paul then gave me seeds/seedlings 14 years ago and now they are mature split-leaves thriving in Sicily.

Carlo

[jam99]

Stunning stuff. Thanks for sharing. How cold hardy is the C. Oreophila X radicalis hybrid compared to a regular radicalis?

[Kathy]

Robert, I'm so glad you toured Dick's place for the benefit of all of us.  Post more please.  

Dick, your garden is more grand & mature than I imagined.  Thank you for letting Robert post.

[Paul S]

Wow.

[PalmGuyWC]

Hi Carlo,

Yes, I was the one that gave Paul Drummond some seeds of the split leaf C. metallica. I'm happy to hear you have them growing in Sicily, and I hope your spreading them around to others.

As usual, there is a story behind them. You are correct as the split form of C. metallica was once very rare in cultivation. When I lived in Miami in the 60's there was only one person that I knew of who had the split leaf form, and he wasn't about to part with any of the seeds.

Some years later after I moved to Calif., I purchased a few C. metallicas and a couple of them had one or two splits in some of the fronds. While on a visit to Southern Calif., I visited a garden where a fellow had two young split leafed Metallicas growing in his garden, and they were in full bloom, and both males. He allowed me to remove the inflorescenses, and I sealed them in an envelope and brought them back to N. Calif.

A couple of weeks later, my females bloomed, and I used the split leaft pollen.  I got a good seed set and about 60% of the progeny had split fronds, some more than others.  When they bloomed, I used only the most select plants for seeds, and the second generation were almost 100% split leafed.

I think I was on my 3rd generation when we experienced the great freeze of 89/90 and I lost almost all of my Chamaedoreas. Before the freeze, I think I had distributed the split leafed seeds to several people, so there is no telling now where the cousins of your plants are growing.

Dick

[Nigel]

Unbelievable.

If my garden is half that good in 20 years I would be proud.

[ghar41]

Thanks for sharing Robert and Dick of your world class garden.

When I planted my first palm in 1993 (Queen of course) I believed that most fan palms looked too much like Washintonias.   Dick's garden convinced me otherwise, and introduced me to some of my current all time favorites including the mature Trithrinax Campestris.  Photographs of it simply can not convey the incredible features and beauty of this palm.

Thanks for the inspiration!  

Oh and also- the Butia X Parajubea cocoides...WOW!!!......  WOW!!!!!!  

[STEVE IN SO CAL]

I have some offspring from your jubaea x butia in my garden. I think I lost about 20 small ones in the field, though.

[STEVE IN SO CAL]

I got this plant as a 3 leaf seedling about 5 years ago, planted from a two gallon less than three years ago. I bought it from Patrick Schafer...is this one of your grandkids, Dick?

[elHoagie]

Your garden rivals the Huntington...

[Carlo Morici]

Yes, I just had a flashback, I remember Paul speaking in his dense garden telling exactly this story about you and your metallicas.

So here are your grandchildren, pictured in my garden in Sicily, two or three years ago.

Carlo

[STEVE IN SO CAL]

Dick, can you give some idea as to the age of the Butiagrus...I'm planting some in front, fairly close to my house(will eventually replace a large magnolia that dirtys the place up)...yours looks fighteningly LARGE !!

I've heard they're more robust in Calif than Fla.

[iwan]

I didn't think Dick's Bismarkia looked bad at all, but he said it has  declined in the last week.  I think this is a better picture.

Arenga micrantha (undamaged)

Another one a few feet away.

Brutal Trithrinax campestrus spines

[iwan]

Jubaeopsis caffra (?)

Some of the palms on Dick's back patio.

C. metallica

Dick couldn't remember the name at the time, but I really like this Chamaedorea.