my palm tri garden

[tinman10101]

so i thought i would finally start my garden thread that is about 12 years old now just because i am getting back into it now and my kids are growing up and in school so i have more time.  this garden is located in santa clarita, california  (six flags magic mountain) which is a 9b zone but i finally have grown some decent canopy to try to zone push some more tender stuff.  it has snowed here twice since we purchased this house and i documented it early on in this thread when i was still just getting into growing palms and the garden was quite young still (LINK).  In any case, there are so many cool people i have met along the way and it has been great to keep the friendships since this all started with my brother.  he was obsessed with palms and lived in miami and when i purchased a house for the first time, i wanted to landscape it from the usual track housing look and out of a whim, he said why dont you plant palms.   so why not ... and since he already knew some people in socal from the palm world, he introduced me to them on an excursion that would pretty much blow my mind.  i would say i was very fortunate to be introduced to them all.  this was back in 2009.  here are two pics of some very great people from that very amazing day:

... i can tell you coming home after that exhausting day of seeing all the amazing gardens was very depressing.  i had to come home to this LOL:

my wife thought i was crazy and all i could talk about was palm trees.  i told her trust me and give me 10 years LOL, and we could have a slice of paradise in the high desert.  at the end of the day, i told her at least i was addicted to palm trees and not a number of other life's indulgence that could lead to trouble.  LOL.

fast forward 12 years and here it is today.  the great thing is i think i have achieved my slice of paradise ... the bad is the maintenance.  i will try to document the progress of the yard through the years focusing on growth of each palm.  at the end of the day, a lot of the palms are common but not in my area and not in zone 9b that's for sure.  

cheers

tin 

[PalmatierMeg]

I love it! Are you going to give us a detailed tour? You have a very nice house and what a view from your back(?) yard.

[Billeb]

Looking good. As @PalmatierMeg stated….let’s see a tour!! 

-dale

[tinman10101]

1 hour ago, PalmatierMeg said:

I love it! Are you going to give us a detailed tour? You have a very nice house and what a view from your back(?) yard.

thank you for the compliment meg.  coming from you it means a lot since i have been following your garden for awhile and you are quite an expert at growing tropical rare palms.  a tour will come shortly.  btw, the backyard view is gone.  LOL.  my wife is not happy about it either.  the palms i planted in the backyard have almost entirely smothered the view and again, i told my wife to please wait another 10 years when they become telephone poles and the view is once again exposed. 

 

1 hour ago, Billeb said:

Looking good. As @PalmatierMeg stated….let’s see a tour!! 

-dale

thanks dale .... i saw your thread on your garden you just started.  you have placed the palms strategically.  i must say i was overzealous and now its a crowded jungle unfortunately.  there are only a few points within the yard that looks perfectly manicured and there are many that just overcrowded.  i think many new palm enthusiasts make that mistake when they first start out because, at least for me, it was a race to see how many different species i could place in the ground.  tour is coming.  

[tinman10101]

so here are close up shots of each side of the front yard.  the left side i call the xeric side because although it started out palmy, my ignorance for the extreme heat (Summer Temps 105-115F) in this exposed area slowly manifested itself to high intense heat resistant plants.  there are a few palms ... butiagrus, brahea decumbens, bismarkia, and chamaerops humilis argentea (formally cerifera).  but mostly, it consists of my love for aloes and their amazing winter flowering colors.  this lets me enjoy my garden all year round because the colors all the aloes set off are quite nice.  it is a luxury to have a garden where you can look forward to both spring and winter.  
 

[tinman10101]

on the other side is where i try to grow more tropical palms since this is south facing so it allows for lower sun exposure during the winter months.  it is not noticeable as far as tropical palms until you swing towards the entrance to the house.  next to obvious jubaea chilensis is my chamaerops humilis vulcano.  i have many different forms and variations of this palm but i love the juxtaposition of these two palms against one another (david and goliath analogy).  along the side of the house and towards the front door i have pritchardia hillebrandii, ravenea rivularis, rhapis variegated, and some others that i will get into more detail later on.  this is just a quick overview of the different parts of the garden.   

looking towards the front door

side view of raised planter against shared wall with neighbor

looking back towards the jubaea chilensis in the front yard. 

[freakypalmguy]

Tin, your garden looks incredible  love the xeric side. I’m a fan of aloes as well. Mine all melted in the big freeze of 07, so I gave up for years, but a buddy has recently nudged me back towards them. 
 

 Let’s see a better shot of you decumbens and the butiagrus. 
 

Matt

[tinman10101]

46 minutes ago, freakypalmguy said:

Tin, your garden looks incredible  love the xeric side. I’m a fan of aloes as well. Mine all melted in the big freeze of 07, so I gave up for years, but a buddy has recently nudged me back towards them. 
 

 Let’s see a better shot of you decumbens and the butiagrus. 
 

Matt

thanks matt ... here is a close up of the brahea decumbens.  it has finally started getting silver and the butiagrus is behind it.  i am afraid now that edison is going to chop my decumbens because it is now leaning onto the ground power transformer enclosure.  the butiagrus ironically is actually flowering i noticed today.  i actually have 4 of them and my biggest one i had to chop down because it was pushing on my neighbor's wall and cracking.  i almost cried when i chopped it down because it had about 4 feet of clear trunk LOL and had been flowering for about 3 years consistently.  i'll take a pic of whats left of that one as i present the backyard.  this butiagrus is about 1.5' in diameter and i should really water it more because they love water in my zone.  unfortunately it is planted in the xeric side so it gets less water.  i would say i planted the butiagrus from a one gallon about 10 years ago and the brahea decumbens i planted from a one gallon i picked up from kevin weaver about the same time.  i will try to find a photo of them when i first planted. 

 

[freakypalmguy]

Oooh, that December’s is looking nice. I bought one from KW around the same time, but sadly mine is maybe worthy of a five gal pot, that’s what happens in the desert when you don’t water.
 

Bummer about your other Butiagrus, at least that one is looking most excellent.

[tinman10101]

15 minutes ago, freakypalmguy said:

Oooh, that December’s is looking nice. I bought one from KW around the same time, but sadly mine is maybe worthy of a five gal pot, that’s what happens in the desert when you don’t water.
 

Bummer about your other Butiagrus, at least that one is looking most excellent.

thanks again matt.  i would think the decumbens would do good for you but i guess you let it survive on its own LOL.  you should really start growing aloes again.  i luckily bought my home in 2008 so it was right after the freeze or i would probably be discouraged too if everything melted.  i dont believe i found a pic of both palms taken dec 31, 2012.  amazing how the aloes and agaves were bigger than the palms LOL.  (excuse the crappy pic ... was before HD cellphone cameras haha)

[KDubU]

Stunning yard! Just wow, you have the eye.

[tinman10101]

so on the tropical side with the jubaea here are some of the key palms i planted.  first is a closeup of the c. humilis vulcano.  i have always loved the compact form and when it was younger it was so compact with no vertical height that it actually reminded me of a young hemithrinax ekmaniana.  here are a few close up shots of it with my dachsie photobomb.  i have a couple of variations of these plants that i have grown over the many years sourced from spain in a field planted population.  i had to grow them up to about 5 years before separating the different mutations and have saved the slow and compact forms.  i am not sure what i will do with the regular forms but probably guerilla plant them on back side of the hoa.  this one is one of the faster one and is about 8 years old.

[tinman10101]

this one is for meg @PalmatierMeg  here is that backyard view when i started the planting after tilling the clay soil and setting up irrigation with underground drippers to each palm ( 3/10/2009) and here it is this morning.  as you can see my wife is not happy about her view.  lol

 

[Darold Petty]

Looks great, Tin.  Next trip down I expect to see it for myself.  (We need a better shot of our dog !)   

[Darold Petty]

Clarification....your dog ! 

[tinman10101]

5 hours ago, Darold Petty said:

Looks great, Tin.  Next trip down I expect to see it for myself.  (We need a better shot of our dog !)   

sure thing darold.  you are welcome anytime but only with an obligatory beer.   

[Billeb]

13 hours ago, tinman10101 said:

 

 

Love these transformation shots. Bismarckia growth after 10+ years are always impressive. Sweet garden Tin

-dale

[Jimhardy]

What kind of Cycad in last pic?

[KDubU]

Wow that bizzy is a beast already!

[tinman10101]

2 hours ago, Jimhardy said:

What kind of Cycad in last pic?

thats just a encephalartos lehmanii jim.

1 hour ago, KDubU said:

Wow that bizzy is a beast already!

thats funny you say that because when you are impatiently waiting for your new garden to grow ... 12 years was a long wait but i can say that when it started trunking, i no longer monitored its growth.  i think the other thing that has allowed the bizzy to grow faster was the fact that i dont cut any leaves off the bizzy until the old leaves are horizontal and browning.  i try to do that with all my palms and plants in general since plants use the oldest leaves first as energy for new growth. 

my fastest growing palm is actually to the right of the bizzy that is now the pedestal for my buddha statue.  it grew so fast since i planted it next to a sprinkler head but alas, planted too close to a shared wall and had to chop it down a couple of years ago because it was cracking the wall.  as you can see below the girth of the butiagrus and flowered for two years.  i believe i grew that butiagrus from a 3 leaf seedling and planted at a 3 gallon size on 04/02/2011.  it grew vigorously for about 7 years and then got the axe.     i was never able to get a great overall shot of it because the bizzy was always in the way.  in fact they both fought for sunlight so it was the right thing to do in hindsight.  

 

ready to be planted out spring of 2011

healthy crown with flower spath in spring 2018

[D. Morrowii]

@tinman10101 I’m where you were 11 years ago. I feel like a 5 year old in the backseat of the car during a road trip  “are we there yet?” 
 

Your garden look great btw! Thanks for sharing!

[tinman10101]

1 hour ago, D. Morrowii said:

@tinman10101 I’m where you were 11 years ago. I feel like a 5 year old in the backseat of the car during a road trip  “are we there yet?” 
 

Your garden look great btw! Thanks for sharing!

man i know how you feel.  at least you are in florida.  your garden will be spectacular in no time. everything grows so slow for me in the high desert compared to my friends in the OC and San Diego.  i've given baby aloes to friends down there only to find out that they have overgrown my momma aloes and flowering already.  but the journey is great.  my only advice is to document as much as possible.  everyone who comes over here are amazed but sadly, they do not know the number of plants i have killed and the pain of nursing a plant you know you paid too much for to have it eventually die LOL.  ironically, my most prized plants are the ones i grew from seed even if they are not the stand out palms.  i have a trachycarpus winsan i sourced seed from china and germinated and now is over 15 feet tall.  yes it is ugly but not to me.  haha. 

i remain really attached to this house now and it is both good and bad.  my wife wants to move into a bigger house and i don't think i have the heart to start all over again.    

[Jimhardy]

Ok Thanks.  I was wondering if it might be E.Princeps

[realarch]

Tin, a remarkable effort, well done. Good selection, well placed, and wouldn’t you rather look at healthy palm trees than smoke and fire raging in the distance? I lived in San Diego for many years and have a bit of experience with that cheeky comment.

Tim

[tinman10101]

1 hour ago, realarch said:

Tin, a remarkable effort, well done. Good selection, well placed, and wouldn’t you rather look at healthy palm trees than smoke and fire raging in the distance? I lived in San Diego for many years and have a bit of experience with that cheeky comment.

Tim

thanks tim.  you are so right about the fires. below is a pic of the night of 07/22/2016 with all the mountains on fire.  it was quite scary because we had fires to the north, south, east, and west of us..  that was too close for comfort.  it is now a usual occurrence unfortunately.  

i guess you are one of the few that made the exodus to HI to grow palms LOL.  when i was a newbie i couldnt believe these palm growers obsession and now i have this pipe dream one day.  

 

[tinman10101]

ok so back to the front yard.  on 03/2009 was when i started many of the new plantings.  on another post, i conveyed that the jubaea was very special to me because my brother helped me plant it. i did not even know how to plant a potted plant back then.  here are some pics of it when it was first planted.  if i had to do it again i wouldnt have centered the jubaea but moved it a foot towards the driveway.  the leaves are pushing on my neighbor's bush and it is causing it to lean a bit.  it was in a 30 gallon pot from gary which he dug from his field planted population. its about 12 feet tall and holding approximately 30 leaves now with most in the top crown and seems to be very healthy.  this palm has been maintenance free for me.  it laughs at the heat, cold, snow, and santa ana winds.  

taken today 09/07/2021

 

[tinman10101]

another palm in the front yard is livistona australis.  why?  why not.  i was very limited to what i thought could grow in my extreme weather and everyone said livistonas are fool proof.  here it is planted from a three gallon in 03/2009.  it too is tough as nails and has required no maintenance whatsoever.  the leaves do get tattered from the santa ana winds but besides that i really dont care for it besides water and fertilizer.  it stands now about 6 feet tall from soil line to top most leaf tip.  :

 

and here it is today:

[realarch]

6 hours ago, tinman10101 said:

thanks tim.  you are so right about the fires. below is a pic of the night of 07/22/2016 with all the mountains on fire.  it was quite scary because we had fires to the north, south, east, and west of us..  that was too close for comfort.  it is now a usual occurrence unfortunately.  

i guess you are one of the few that made the exodus to HI to grow palms LOL.  when i was a newbie i couldnt believe these palm growers obsession and now i have this pipe dream one day.  

 

Good lord, what a dramatic photograph. Hell on the near horizon.

Tim

[The Gerg]

Fabulous garden. Very well done. Not just for Santa Clarita, but for anywhere. 

[tinman10101]

9 hours ago, The Gerg said:

Fabulous garden. Very well done. Not just for Santa Clarita, but for anywhere. 

thanks so much greg.  i see you are in ventura so anytime you are in the area you are welcome to check out the garden.  i go to ventura quite often and am super jealous of your weather.  i couldnt imagine how awesome it is to grow palms there since i stop by pauleen's properties to see how the palms are doing every now and then.  its definitely one sweet spot to grow palms. 

[tinman10101]

@Billeb  another transformation pic.  i know its a little jungly and overkill but i can tell you that my yard is at least 5F cooler during the summer and 5F warmer during the winter. i definitely need this too try to push the zone but at least i can say that i have created a small microclimate in certain areas of my yard.  

taken 03/2009 (i forgot what i had to put my wife through the first few years LOL.) :

 

and this morning:

[D. Morrowii]

21 hours ago, tinman10101 said:

man i know how you feel.  at least you are in florida.  your garden will be spectacular in no time. everything grows so slow for me in the high desert compared to my friends in the OC and San Diego.  i've given baby aloes to friends down there only to find out that they have overgrown my momma aloes and flowering already.  but the journey is great.  my only advice is to document as much as possible.  everyone who comes over here are amazed but sadly, they do not know the number of plants i have killed and the pain of nursing a plant you know you paid too much for to have it eventually die LOL.  ironically, my most prized plants are the ones i grew from seed even if they are not the stand out palms.  i have a trachycarpus winsan i sourced seed from china and germinated and now is over 15 feet tall.  yes it is ugly but not to me.  haha. 

i remain really attached to this house now and it is both good and bad.  my wife wants to move into a bigger house and i don't think i have the heart to start all over again.    

Tin, We are from So Cal originally but moved to Florida about 7 years ago. I’m a much better gardener here for some reason :-) My wife was actually born and raised in Saugus so small world! We lived in Bellflower up until we left though. As far as zone pushing I have a few palms that I probably shouldn’t be trying to grow here so I probably have some disappointment coming in my future. I’m expecting some surprise wins as well. I’m with you on bringing them up from seed and to a slightly lesser extent digging up a seedling in a parking lot somewhere. There is some sort of story attached to each of those. 

[Billeb]

32 minutes ago, tinman10101 said:

@Billeb  … (i forgot what i had to put my wife through the first few years LOL)

 

and this morning:

Tin, my wife was just made a comment about how many plants we had now and how many pots were all around. Can’t please everyone I guess! 

I love what you did with adding multiple Encephalartos and cycads. I have quite a few too and I think most don’t utilize them enough. Changes the landscape a lot. 
 

-dale

[tinman10101]

2 hours ago, D. Morrowii said:

Tin, We are from So Cal originally but moved to Florida about 7 years ago. I’m a much better gardener here for some reason :-) My wife was actually born and raised in Saugus so small world! We lived in Bellflower up until we left though. As far as zone pushing I have a few palms that I probably shouldn’t be trying to grow here so I probably have some disappointment coming in my future. I’m expecting some surprise wins as well. I’m with you on bringing them up from seed and to a slightly lesser extent digging up a seedling in a parking lot somewhere. There is some sort of story attached to each of those. 

wow thats crazy dean because i live in saugus LOL.  and yes i agree.  every palm has a story and their personification becomes quite extraordinary.  funny story is the older i get, the more i enjoy the company of plants.  im sure you pushing the zones in florida will eventually stumble some sweet spots in your yard that allows you to grow something incredible.  i mean i have a foxy lady that has about 5 feet of trunk (although not robust) on the side of my yard in a 9b zone.  that's something that i threw a dice on and nurtured when small but now its too big to protect.  i dont believe its still alive and doesnt look bad except its growing in the jungle portion of my yard so its hard to capture.  obviously, the canopy that i planted has allowed this palm to survive.  

planted 03/2009:

 

and today:

[tinman10101]

so let's talk bizzys.  this seems to be a standout palm in socal and i know the first time i saw one, i was blown away by the huge leaves and the color.  i remember growing up in 80s in miami, there were no bizzies anywhere and when i moved to cali in 1994, i never noticed them anywhere in socal.  i dont think i looked but i would have noticed an odd silver palm very different from a washie in LA.  in any case, once we purchased our home in 2008 and my palm addiction started in 2009, i would like for bizzys everywhere i went in LA ...  that would be sure sign of a palm enthusiasts here anyway.  coming back to miami to visit my family every now and then after 2009, i noticed streets were lined with huge bizzys.  i drove down streets that i played along when i was in school grade and it was like an invasion of bizmarkias landed all over the kendall area.  knowing that these palms are dioecious, i decided to plant three in hopes of having at least one of each sex (none have flowered yet  ).  i planted two in the front yard and one in the back.  i purchased them from kevin weaver all 15 gallons but on different years.  below you can see an aerial shot of the home and i will focus on the growth of each.   

bizmarkia #1 was planted sometime in 2010.  i really didnt document its growth very well as i did the backyard because i think i was a little depressed to go out front and see how slow the jubaea was growing in the beginning.  that lead to neglect of taking pictures of the front yard or even going out front to check out growth.  thankfully we have google streets so here are two photos of its growth over the years:

12/2011 winter pic:

 

10/2018 pic with additional landscaping of agaves, aloes, and cycads :

 

and here it is today.  its pretty big and since my front yard slopes down, it kinda towers over you when you look up at it.  the fronds are quite large (3-4 feet in width) and pushing against the jubaea so i cut them because of course the jubaea takes priority LOL.  i know ultimately, the bizzy will over grow over the jubaea and tower over it so i wont have to worry about fronds pushing against it any longer.  this area gets no protection from our brutal sun or cold winters.  the good thing is the sun even during winter's lower trajectory will warm this area in the daytime.  if i had to guess, this bizzy is about 12-15 feet tall from soil line to tip of highest frond.  caliper is about 1.25' across.  its not as silver as the one i have in my backyard and i was almost wishing it would be a green one but i know they are not as cold hardy as people say.  for awhile i know my mailman was pretty upset because i dont like to cut the fronds until they brown and it was pushing against the mailboxes LOL.

not much tomentum on the petiole as the one i have in the backyard

      

 

probably trunking already but cant pull off the leaf bases because of nasty aloe and spikey plants in the way:

 

[tinman10101]

i thought i would show some pics of the other side of my house behind the xeric front yard.  just right behind it is a raised planter that i placed some choice aloes and agaves to view at eye level as well as some palms.  i built up the small planter another 2.5 ft with retaining blocks so the soil line would be somewhat closer to eye level.  

 

 

looking back toward the street:

 

[tinman10101]

the parajubaea is huge now and not even trunking.  it towers over you and of course since it is on a raised planter, it has this overwhelming presence.  plus it provides ample filtered light for the aloes and agaves below during our crazy heat waves.  i would say each front is about 10 feet long.  i had to take a ground pic looking up to try to get all of it in the pic below (i actually planted another in the backyard but lost to the common trunk rot.  it had a sprinkler head hit it daily (ameteur move) and i was very sad to chop it down).

and here it is planted on 08/13/2009 from a 3 gallon size:

[tinman10101]

right behind the gates is my tropical jungle i tried to create with canopy.  it has some palms that i am amazed have survived as cold as 26F for 4-6 hours and bounced back.  i am sure when we get another hard freeze there will be major damage here but i hope that the size of the palms will allow them to recoup.  

 

first is pritchardia beccariana.  the leaves are so big and it is so stuffed in there that i apologize, i cant even take a good pic of it.  i would say the spread of each frond is at least 3 feet across and very stretched.  

 

overhead shot from my son's bedroom window on the second floor:

 

base is about 10" across:

 

and being very stretched it reaches for the sun and is about 10 ft tall from soil line to tip of highest frond

      

        

[tinman10101]

back to the front yard i have another great palm i love and should have planted more is chamaedorea ernesti-augusti.  i think this one was planted sometime in 2011 from a small one gallon. it has about  1.5' of stem and is protected under a pritchardia hildebrandtii in the front yard.  

right to the left of it is a rhapis variegated palm ... i really like the contrast it provides against all the green and not sure why we don't see it more in california gardens.  these were tiny one gallon i brought back when i visited my parents in miami back in 2011.  i grew them out till they were sizable 3 gallons before planting.  this one has produced a nice new rhizome and is starting to spread slowly.  i will probably remove the pup and plant it elsewhere in the garden.

[tinman10101]

another cool palm that i love is chamaedorea metallica split leaf.  i was lucky to get one of these and its growing quite nicely in my little jungle.  it is being a little overwhelmed by my sabal mauritiiformis.