My yard on Apollo Beach, FL

[JeffreyApolloBeach]

Hello,

I've been lurking in here for a while now...learning from the comments of you all.  Well, finally decide to post some pictures of my yard on Apollo Beach, FL.  We moved into this house on February 2007, so the landscape is very young.  On top of that all the palms that I have added are very young, with most of them coming on 7 gal or 15 gal containers.

From right to left: Ptychosperma elegans, 3 Foxtails, Veitchia winn, Archontophoenix alexandrae and Veitchia arecina

Ptychosperma elegans and Bamboo palm

From right to left: Archontophoenix Alexandrae, Veitchia winn, Foxtail

Spindle and Royal on the front

[deezpalms]

Give it a few years and those palms will lookin' REAL good!!

[JeffreyApolloBeach]

Continuing with the tour....

Future home for shade loving palms

Blank canvas on the back...two smal trees are Royal Poinciana

From left to right: Dypsis lutescens, 4 Carpentaria acuminata, a triple Veitchia winn (this is the south facing side of the house).

The back of the property is a mangrove, and crossing the mangrove there is a golf course...here is my attempt on taking a picture of a small crab...it is in the middle of the picture, the left claw is as big as the body

[surgeon83]

You will be amazed at how fast those grow for you in that climate.  It will start looking really nice in just a year or two (already does)!  

The style of your house is so very different from that of the neighboring pink house- were they built at the same time?

[Jeff in St Pete]

Jeffrey,  Great start with some fast growing palms!  I look forward to seeing pictures of the transformation over the next few years!

[el-blanco]

Great place and great pics.  

One thing I would change is in the back; you have the 4 Carpenteria planted next to the house.  These are tall palms and eventually will grow into the eaves.  They could possibly lean away from the house once they get to the roof line but will most likely bang against the gutters during any strong wind you may have..... I am speaking all of this from my experience.  I hope you are not offended at my pointing this out.

Nice place you have.  Do you get alligators out back??

Visit this post again in a years time with new pics!!

THanks,  Jeff

[happ]

Nice big yard, Jeffrey    Lush already

[Kris]

Dear Jeffrey  

That's a nice garden and a beautiful house,but i did not see

any of the regular favouriates there _bismarkia(Silver),Cycas

revoulata & the CIDP ?

Love,

Kris  

[Dave-Vero]

I concur with el-blanco.  Feather leaves whipping around in the wind can cause damage (a colleague living in an older apartment building suffered a broken window during hurricane Jeanne thanks to a queen palm leaf).  Most palm stems are flexible, which could also cause problems.  The reason is that most palms have a lot of starchy tissue (parenchyma) in which vascular bundles with fibers are scattered.  

I think carpies, like Archontophoenix do benefit from some shade when young.  Any number of plants could provide a bit.  Panama rose (often available at the big box stores, notably Lowes) is a fairly good sort of temporary shrub.

Is your neighbor's front tree a ficus?   Whatever, it and the other tree look like good protectors for understory species.  I'm trying Zamia variegata and Rhapis in that sort of situation.  Maybe some cute Chamaedoreas?

[ruskinPalms]

Nice stuff you have there Jeffrey. They are right about the high wind thing and planting close to the house. I thought about that hard before I planted a lot of stuff close to my house but I decided that I would give it a chance and see what happens. I have to plant close the house for the more tender species or else they would probably get killed by frosts every few years otherwise. Here's to hoping that there are not any bad tropical storms or hurricanes coming our way any time soon!

[Walter John]

Perfect size for planting in my opinion. They will establish into truer forms a lot quicker and give you the owner/planter a great deal of satisfaction. How do I know ? because that's the sizes I planted my palms at and after 5 years they(most) are looking better than I expected.

Good job, those poincianas won't take long either and then you can have some Licualas and Pinangas to consider.

Those carpies etc will grow away from the house enough, there's a royal palm down the road from me, planted right up against the house and it looks just fine and dandy and is taller than the house.

Mulch, mulch, mulch and water, water, water. Some seaweed juice is good at this time too.

Think about before and after pics, I am looking forward to viewing those palms growing up.

[RadPalms]

Jeffrey.......All I can say is WOW.....great house with a beautiful selection of palms ......sure to be an eye pleaser to all that drives by or visits you......can't wait to see next years pictures

[SubTropicRay]

Nice yard Jeffrey.  I envision grass patches slowly disappearing for more plantings.

Ray

[epicure3]

That is a great job you've done and welcome to the board.

[deezpalms]

Well Jeffery, you have a nice n' big blank canvas to work with! This is just the way I would like to buy a home so you can really do just what you want with the landscape without having to remove century old trees and plants!!

[JeffreyApolloBeach]

Thanks everybody for the comments.   All comments are well taken, so please do not hesitate to make suggestions.

The pink house next door was built in 1993.  You can bring your own builder, so a lot of the houses in the area look very different.  As for alligators, so far I have not seen any, and hopefully they'll stay away from the brackish water!  I've done kayaking in the canal and have not seen any.

Thanks for the suggestion on the Carpentarias.  They are about 4 feet away from the house..that was the closet to the house I could put them to help provide some of that radiatonal heating from the wall in the winter.  Hopefully as they grow they will lean away from the overhang.

I read on this forum about the growth speed of some of these palms, that' why I decided to use these.  I want to create some height before continuing on with more plantings!!  I think my next project would be to put some palms under the Ficus trees....there is plenty of shade on that area already.

Oh, and I'm trying to stay away from anything that has spines on it...I have a 4 year old that likes to run around and would hate a 5 inch spine doing any harm to him!!  When the time comes, I'll start with the Phoenix roebellini and the Phoenix reclinata.

Thanks.

[sonoranfans]

(JeffreyApolloBeach @ Jul. 13 2007,23:48)

QUOTE

Hello,

I've been lurking in here for a while now...learning from the comments of you all.  Well, finally decide to post some pictures of my yard on Apollo Beach, FL.  We moved into this house on February 2007, so the landscape is very young.  On top of that all the palms that I have added are very young, with most of them coming on 7 gal or 15 gal containers.

From right to left: Ptychosperma elegans, 3 Foxtails, Veitchia winn, Archontophoenix alexandrae and Veitchia arecina

Ptychosperma elegans and Bamboo palm

From right to left: Archontophoenix Alexandrae, Veitchia winn, Foxtail

Spindle and Royal on the front

very nice Jeff, a great start.  I'll side with ray and say shrinking grass areas and more palms/shrubs in the future as these palms grow up.  I hear you on the phoenix species, they hurt to trim as well.  The Feng shui thing to do would be to plant shorter "dwarf" palms/shrubs under the fast growing taller ones to get a multi layer canopy effect.  Also alot of those feather palms tend to look even better planted in groups of '3', but of different heights, if possible.  Wonderful place already, though.

[Dave-Vero]

Alligators are fresh-water animals, so you're unlikely to see them among the mangroves.  Crocs are too far south to worry about (they're less snappy than gators, anyway).

Maybe a couple of Simpson stopper bushes near the edge of the yard toward the pink house?  Their grass doesn't look real good.

A house on my street once had pink fake shutters.  When it went on sale, there was talk of sneaking over one night and doing a quick repainting.

[BS Man about Palms]

I had to bump this for Jeffreys thread AND to sadly note how few respondents here are still here.