Dwarf Cavendish banana and Giant Bird trees ... overpruned?

[PixelsaurusRex]

Hey everyone! Temperatures are starting to rise after an unusually rainy Bay Area winter and a bit of frost.

Dwarf Cavendish banana tree leaves went from healthy green to shabby looking yellow and brown. A few Giant Bird leaves were torn up, but overall looked much healthier than the bananas.

This week, my landscapers did a pretty deep surprise pruning and I'm wondering: Did they overprune? Or is this reasonable for a post-winter cleanup prune?

My banana trees are now big vertical sticks and a bunch of what seemed like healthy growth was trimmed from the Giant Birds.

[PalmsandLiszt]

The Streliztias look fine (assuming these are all 'after' photos). I'd wait until leaves are getting crispy brown before removing them; they naturally get torn up in the wind and the plant doesn't care so long as they're green. I'm not sure pruning these will encourage growth; they'll grow anyway; it might perhaps make them more liable to sucker (if you want that?), I'm not sure. I'd not prune green leaves unless you have aesthetic reasons to do so.

The banana leaves are probably just victims of the frost. They should come back very quickly once it's warmed up and frosts stop killing off the leaves.

[PixelsaurusRex]

Two months later, the banana trees are tall dead-looking sticks with a small amount of growth at the very top.

Is this expected? Will future growth only likely happen at the top?

[Merlyn]

@PixelsaurusRex yes the banana will only grow new leaves through the top of the pseudostem.  They may grow a new sucker at the bottom, to replace the tall one when it eventually flowers and grows bananas.  On freeze-damaged bananas sometimes I top cut around the red line in my below sketch.  This way the new leaves grow out independent of the old burnt ones.   Yours looks fine, I wouldn't mess with it at this point.  Just cut off the scraggly burnt ones when you've got a nice new leaf or two.

BTW - the white bird of paradise is trimmed about how I do mine every spring.  I just cut off anything brown.