Zone 10 Landscape Inspiration

[JJPalmer]

I purchased a house in September in St. Petersburg, FL; now that we’ve turned the corner on winter, I’d like to start planning out my plantings a bit.  Unfortunately, my neighborhood is rather bleak for interesting palms, and it’s hard to take inspiration from the mansions nearby. As much as I want a yard filled with ancient royals, it doesn’t fit the aesthetic of your typical Florida ranch home. I do want to be cautious of over planting, given we likely will not be at the property in the long-term, and resale value is important. 

If anyone has them, I’d love to see some yard pictures from those of you in zone 10 or otherwise nice landscaping scenes you’ve seen. 
 

Thanks in advance!

[ruskinPalms]

If you’re not going to be there long term and don’t want it to become a total jungle then just plant the usual cheap stuff from Home Depot or Lowe’s like foxtails, coconuts, Thrinax radiata, Dypsis lutescens, bottles, spindles and try to find a spot for a Bismarckia. Don’t bother buying any big pots, these all grow really fast here with water and fertilizer. If you plan to move in 5 to 10 years I personally wouldn’t buy rare, expensive palms. A lot of them are slow and not really proven here. Your potential future buyers are likely to rip half of it out anyway. Think about different leaf textures, try not to go all pinnate, think about growth rate, think about if you need to screen out neighbors (hello, Dypsis lutescens...). Crotons, the small birds of paradise and arbiricola and heliconia have been great understory plantings for me and are cheap. Bush suggestion is good old hibiscus and small tree suggestion is Seagrape. I keep coming back to cheap as there is no reason to spend a fortune here to have a lush zone 10 inspired landscape. I tend to stay away from anything with thorns because I have small kids and even when they grow up I still don’t want to deal with thorny plants to maintain. My back yard is a series of landscape islands somewhat randomly placed. I leave space to walk around the landscape islands near my fence; makes it much easier to maintain. I know what I have have suggested is common and plenty on this forum would scoff at my suggestions but over all cost and the likelihood that your are not staying there for the long haul leads me to recommend cheap, easy to find and easy to replace plants. If you use these common plants with the eye of a landscape artist and not so much as a collector then you can do great things with them. 

[ruskinPalms]

Quick pics from today of common palms and plants in action. Stuff is a little beat up from winter, especially the Adonidias, coconut to a lesser extent. But I do live in 9B so they would likely do better for you. I recently hacked down all of last year’s heliconia which I do every spring. I’ve slowly been adding Thrinax radiata here and there as they are small, cheap and easy to find. I want some more palmate palms to balance out the pinnate palms. 

[ruskinPalms]

The foxtails were planted at 5 gallon size in spring of 2015. 

[ruskinPalms]

The above bismarckia was planted in spring 2018 from a 3 gallon pot. 

Edited March 12, 2021 by ruskinPalms

[ruskinPalms]

Last one I will bore you with. This bismarckia was planted as a 5 gallon in 2015. 

[ruskinPalms]

And if you do decide to go for some more exotic species these would be on my short list:

Clinostigma savoryanum
Kentiopsis oliviformis

Chambeyronia macrocarpa

And Hawaiian pritchardia species  

 

 

[ruskinPalms]

Less harsh lighting in this pic. Sorry I would have replaced the other one but I guess it is too late to edit. 

[kinzyjr]

@JJPalmer You've been here to see the front, but I keep all of the goodies in the back.  You can see the updates as they come in for my property on this thread:

https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/52296-palms-and-others-of-interest/&

As far as Zone 10-ish type stuff for ranch homes, I'm assuming you don't want something so large it will overpower the home in the landscape since you used Royal palms as an example.  Think dainty crownshaft palms.  Ptychosperma sp. (especially elegans and macarthurii), Veitchia arecina, Adonidia merrillii and Carpentaria acuminata come to mind if you want that look.  Dypsis lutescens and Dypsis lanceolata are clustering and look nice.  Just keep in mind that a Foxtail can still get pretty large if you put one on the property.  Pseudophoenix sargentii is a good native option. 

@ruskinPalms made great suggestions and showed some great photos.   His advice about not overdoing it if you plan on selling is sound advice in my opinion as well.  If I sold this place, I'd likely have people wanting rid of most of my plants as a condition of buying.

[chinandega81]

I would line the property with larger trees or plants for a green screen on sides and the back. It depends if you have shade from trees...but I would plant bananas, papayas, dypsis lutesecens, lady palms if shady interspersed with interesting trees in the corners like an avocado and a mango since most buyers will like fruiting trees. Closer to the house and in the front I would go with a focal plant like a plumeria or scheflera at the corner of the house and just use starbust clerodenrum and crotons here and there with ti plants as accents. A nice small flowering tree like a tabebuia would look nice and not scare too many potential buyers away if they decide to remove things.

[ruskinPalms]

Another great understory plant is actually a palm. Sabal minor. These really are awesome beautiful palms no matter your growing zone (no thorns either...hehe ;-)

[JJPalmer]

Thanks all for the recommendations: for some reason I didn't receive notifications for this post, so I didn't see it until now!

[sonoranfans]

Home depot choices are not necessarily the palms that like it here, and their prices for small palms are not very good.  In saint Pete look at the local foxtails and queens, pretty poor looking.  You are probably 40 mins at most from my place so I expect the cocos are yellow, th spindles are recovering and the bottles look crappy(vs what they could be).  One question is how big is your lot?  It its small(1/6th acre or less), planting along borders(but not strictly) will give plenty of walking area around the house.  Pictured are some fast growing archontopheonix sp, chambeyronia macrocarpa, dypsis pembana and beccariophoenix alfredii among others.  All are easy grows, and they wont be at home depot.  There is a member on this forum SW FL Chris who is near you(clearwater?) and has a nursery with these palms up to 15 gallon size I think.  The archontophoenix are fast growers as are dypsis pembana.  If you want some small dypsis pembana seedlings I can give you a few as mine went to seed and I have a hundred or so in several community pots.  Pembanas will volunteer here and they are succoring palms but usually only 2-3 trunks, so they uccor slowly, much easier to control.  The golden canes you see at home depot are community pots and those palms succor a ton.  I have had to chop out a number of lutcens trunks in one of my home depot "disasters".  At this time my lutecens has 8 major trunks(3' clear trunk and 10-15 smaller ones I need to trim out.  It is pretty, but its a lot of work.  Pembana is less prone to yellowing and come out of winter looking much better but with greenish-blue ringed trunks. 

[Looking Glass]

2 hours ago, sonoranfans said:

Home depot choices are not necessarily the palms that like it here, and their prices for small palms are not very good.  In saint Pete look at the local foxtails and queens, pretty poor looking.  You are probably 40 mins at most from my place so I expect the cocos are yellow, th spindles are recovering and the bottles look crappy(vs what they could be).  One question is how big is your lot?  It its small(1/6th acre or less), planting along borders(but not strictly) will give plenty of walking area around the house.  Pictured are some fast growing archontopheonix sp, chambeyronia macrocarpa, dypsis pembana and beccariophoenix alfredii among others.  All are easy grows, and they wont be at home depot.  There is a member on this forum SW FL Chris who is near you(clearwater?) and has a nursery with these palms up to 15 gallon size I think.  The archontophoenix are fast growers as are dypsis pembana.  If you want some small dypsis pembana seedlings I can give you a few as mine went to seed and I have a hundred or so in several community pots.  Pembanas will volunteer here and they are succoring palms but usually only 2-3 trunks, so they uccor slowly, much easier to control.  The golden canes you see at home depot are community pots and those palms succor a ton.  I have had to chop out a number of lutcens trunks in one of my home depot "disasters".  At this time my lutecens has 8 major trunks(3' clear trunk and 10-15 smaller ones I need to trim out.  It is pretty, but its a lot of work.  Pembana is less prone to yellowing and come out of winter looking much better but with greenish-blue ringed trunks. 

What a great looking spot.  Nice work...