Never look back! (Palms planted in former houses)

[Yunder Wækraus]

Our old Florida house, which we sold in 2018, is on the market. It had no landscaping when we bought it, and I spent a fair amount of money and time in getting Florida native palms in the yard. We had a royal palm, which had been raised in the Glades, brought in by crane. We also had a fantastic Everglades palm cluster professional installed in front of the entrance as a privacy hedge of sorts. I obtained native thatch palms and buccaneer palms, which were doing very well (if growing slowly). I put in a small coconut and a traveler's palm, too. The new owners ripped out everything but the royal, cocount, and traveler's palm

That coconut was bent flat in one direction by Hurricane Matthew, and then Irma bent it back in the other! I'm surprised by how big it looks, as I couldn't have bought it any earlier than 2015 or 2016, when it was still in a pot I could lift and move by hand. That royal did better while I owned it because I'd let the well water, which didn't have to be pumped (there was enough natural pressure for a steady drip) slowly saturate its roots all day each day during the drier months.

They also tore out my sea grapes, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. Oh well...it was a nice little house on a great little barrier island. RIP, native palms that lost their lives because I abandoned them
 

[meridannight]

I understand the pain.

I grow a lot of palms and other plants from seed, and naturally I sell many of them. Simply because I won't have space for them all, and because I need funds to finance my botanical activities. But every plant I've grown from seed, when I'm selling them, I always think about how the new owner might not care for them as well as I did, and how they may even neglect them resulting in the plants' demise. I always feel a sense of loss when selling away plants I've given life to. Nothing I can do about it. Just part of my life, have to live with it. 

 

[Yunder Wækraus]

58 minutes ago, meridannight said:

I understand the pain.

I grow a lot of palms and other plants from seed, and naturally I sell many of them. Simply because I won't have space for them all, and because I need funds to finance my botanical activities. But every plant I've grown from seed, when I'm selling them, I always think about how the new owner might not care for them as well as I did, and how they may even neglect them resulting in the plants' demise. I always feel a sense of loss when selling away plants I've given life to. Nothing I can do about it. Just part of my life, have to live with it. 

 

It's hard to let go. I still ask family to drive by and check our first house in California, where I planted many unusual (for the area) plants, some of which are still there more than 10 years after I planted them. I've been in our current house 3 years, which is as long as we lived in either of our other houses, but I have only planted a few things. Part of that is because we have a tiny yard with so many pipes and underground cables that I dare not dig any new holes (what I've planted has largely been planted by tearing out the builder's original plants and carefully putting new stuff in those holes), but I think another reason is I don't want to get too worried about thousands of dollars of new plants that I might someday have to hand over to a stranger

[Yunder Wækraus]

It is wild to see how fast that coconut has grown, though. That royal palm, as I said, was already fully trunked, with the green shaft starting at about 5 or 6', and it required heavy equipment to be brought in. The coconut was planted later that same summer, and it was in a plastic pot that was capable of being moved by hand (if with some difficulty). Here's a picture of it on the day it was planted in August of 2015. It still had the shell on its base, and there really wasn't trunk yet. Now, its crown equals the royal, and it has almost as much trunk! More proof that the coconuts are meant for the heavy salt spray and almost-pure sand soils of Barrier Island (the stupid name for the barrier island on which we lived).

[BayAndroid]

The very first palm seed I ever sprouted was a Canary Islands Date Palm. At the time I thought it was a Mexican Fan Palm, since I collected a bunch of seeds as a teen and planted them in some pots in my room. It was the very fact that it was not a Mexican Fan Palm that sorta made this special. I was always able to point to this as my first palm I ever grew from seed. It was only about a year or so ago that I finally sold this palm. It had survived in a pot for all these years (I'm 35 now) and it was much smaller than it would have been if it had been in the ground. Tucked away in the back yard, where I didn't get to it as much as I would have liked, I knew it was too big for me to plant in the yard. I sold it to someone locally for $20 (it was in a sad state of affairs). To my surprise, I received an unexpected message from the buyer later this year with a picture of it in their yard and a thank you. They said they thought I'd like to know how it was doing (it was doing great). 

Sometimes looking back might be worth it. But I know it goes both ways. 

 

[happypalms]

I understand how you feel I sell Johannesteijsmannia palms I only sell them to true gardeners sold only to a good home some people are not interested in someone else’s vision or future preservation