Turning a Water Oak Forest into a Tropical Paradise in NW Orlando

[Merlyn]

In the NW corner of the lot there is a really large water oak, it's probably the only one that's been in consistently good condition.  For now it will stay, mostly because it's too far from the house to fall and do any serious damage.  In June 2016 (one my early projects) I bought about 25 landscape blocks and made a little bed around the trunk:

I really had no idea what to do with it.  The dirt wasn't deep enough and the diameter wasn't large enough to really plant anything there, since the huge oak roots were only about 2 inches below the mulch.  So I put a few Hawaiian Ti "Red Sister" plants and some Heliconia Psittacorum in there and mostly ignored it.  The "Lady Di" ones did okay over the winters, but in February 2019 it looked really ratty.  The blocks were sinking into the sand and the grass (er, I mean the weeds) were constantly growing into it.  So I doubled the diameter and did a 2 layer block wall, adding about 15 bags of MG garden soil and a couple of wheelbarrow loads of my local sand.

I bought a couple more Hawaiian Ti from Green's Nursery and turned them into triples on each diagonal quadrant.  On the East side I put a Bordelon banana that is supposed to be very cold hardy.  It was 1 plant over the winter and now has 3 large trunks and several more offsets.  On the other sides I planted Heliconias, a "Bihai Giant," a "Temptress," several "Orange Gyro" and on the North side 2 pots of Rostrata from Green's Nursery.  And as I finished typing this I realized I don't have a decent photo of the "final" product, so I'll have to take a picture tomorrow.

This area eventually will be a home to a Patric hybrid, either Jubaea x Butia or Butia x Jubaea, but my seedlings are still small strap leaves and will take several years before they are planting sizes.  So at the moment I'm just planting pretty stuff that will be really easy to transplant later.

[Merlyn]

This is the tree planter today, the Bordelon bananas have really taken off and are 6-8' tall now.  I bought one last fall and a bear came through and chewed off the top in the spring.  So it responded by growing 2 more giant offsets.  The photo is a little dark but they have really nice burgundy undersides to the leaves.  The Rostrata clumps are on the right behind the bananas and have already flowered on at least 3 stalks.  The Bihai Giant on the left side is supposed to be fairly cold hardy but tends to bloom in the winter, so I may never see a bloom on it.  The "Orange Gyro" Latispatha is supposed to be bulb-hardy down to almost 20F if it's kept dry and blooms in the fall.  If the squirrels will stop chewing the tops off then it might grow this year....grrrrr....

[Merlyn]

In the second post in this thread, I had pretty much done the same thing to the front yard lightpost as I did to the tree:  Buy some landscape blocks and make a ring.  After a while I got really tired of pulling the vine back out of the light fixture, so in February 2018 I dug it out and planted a few orange bird of paradise and impatiens around the post.  In the upper right you can see how demolished my huge peace lily was after those couple of cold nights!

As with everything else, I soon decided that was way, waaaaaaay too small.  I found a kinda neglected Canary Date Palm from Green's and picked a spot in the middle of the yard, far enough from everything so the fronds wouldn't be a problem.  I planted it too high on purpose, and then brought about 20 wheelbarrows full of dirt/sand from the backyard to make this:

The sagos were free offsets from a friend, and I put a pair of Agave Americana in the middle with a small Pygmy Date double, impatiens around the edge alternating with more orange bird of paradise.  At the lightpost I planted a bunch of canna lilies, which have been my lowest-maintenance flower in the whole yard.  At the time the impatiens worked great, but if I didn't water them every single day they wilted and tried to die.  By September they were basically all dead.  After they were dead I finally got around to installing dripline in that area, but I probably won't try impatiens again.  They seem to need daily overhead water and die with anything over 50% sun.  This bed was by far the worst for weeds, even with mulch it was a nightmare.  I put another layer in the spring of 2019 and it's been a lot better with about 3" of mulch.  Here's what it looks like now, I moved the Pygmy Date in February and planted an Encephalartos Whitelockii from PT member ChuckG in the center.  It's just finishing a 2 leaf flush here in the photo.  Everything except the impatiens did great, including the two Agave Desmettiana with the weird asymmetric variegation.  I put in a couple of tiny agaves along the driveway (Kissho Khan, Potatorum, Victoria-Reginae and Cream Spike) and a couple of bigger Salmiana, a hybrid similar to Mr. Ripple, and a couple of Americana yellow variegated.  Some are just there for the heck of it, since I haven't figured out how to get some flowers to live in here long-term.  This photo is from May 2019:

[Merlyn]

On the NW corner of the house I had created a smallish bed, and planted a nice $35 Adonidia triple from Green's and a medium sized Pygmy Date triple on the far right of the big water oak.  This wasn't the best choice for the Adonidia or the canna lilies that I planted under it, since they get zero direct sun in the winter.  The Adonidia hasn't been tested yet in the cold, it had a little bit of leaf burn at ~33F for 2 nights in January 2019.  I suspect I'll end up moving it or it'll just die in one of the 25F cold snaps.  This photo is from April 2018:

I pretty much ignored this area until November, when I planted a slightly neglected Sylvester.  In March 2019 I found a "Queen Sago" that is probably a Circinalis/Rumphii/Thouarsii.  It was a ridiculously good deal at $60 from Green's, they really wanted it out of their greenhouse!  I put them sort of out in the yard, with the intention of expanding the sidewalk bed out to the other side.  I found a couple of cute dwarf coconuts and put them in the corner of the sidewalk bed, just as an experiment. 

In May 2019 I dug out the grass....er...weeds from each side of the Sylvester and finished the bed.  Around the arc next to the grass I planted a tiny Encephalartos Lehmanni, a variegated yellow Agave Americana, and a line of the Heliconia Psittacorum that used to be in the "tree bed."  Behind the Sylvester are a couple of giant Cannas called "Australia" that are now flowering at about 5-6' tall.  On the sidewalk side are an Encephalartos Trispinosus from ChuckG (next to the coconut) and a hybrid Encephalartos Aemulans x Lehmannii.  They are pretty tiny right now but seem to be doing okay in the very sunny area with no overhead irrigation.  I put a dripline in under the mulch, so the Sylvester, Heliconias and Cannas get consistent water.  The Dusty Miller along the sidewalk are doing fine, but the impatiens (like the others nearby) just wilted and died in the middle of summer.  This photo is at the end of May 2019:

The last couple of posts have been more about "palm accessories" than palms, I promise I'll get to the palms when I get to editing photos of the backyard! 

Edited August 2, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Merlyn]

In June 2018 I finally decided to clear all the water oaks from the back yard, leaving only 3 on the fenceline that are too far from the house to fall on it.  Here are a couple of before and after photos from the SE corner.

Looking towards the front before, with 5 water oaks and 1 live oak:

And the destruction after it's done:

From the SE corner looking across the backyard, with 8 water oaks about to die!

A bunch of the Philodendrons got squished, but they'll grow back fast.  Now I finally have space for palms, but pretty much zero shade in the middle of summer.  My A/C bill definitely hurts now, it's probably $100 per month higher than before!

[Merlyn]

The first task was to get some of the potted palms in the ground, so I cleared out the philodendron bed and laid out a couple of landscape blocks to rough out an arc.  I'm planning a "greenway" of grass in a curve from the front, so I can drive my van into the back and deliver supplies.  The well is also in the SE corner so I'll need truck access there in case the pump fails.  Two Beccariophoenix Alfredii from MB Palms in the center and two Pindos from Green's on the outside.  The Alfredii are only about 8 feet apart, so they will definitely grow together:

About a month later I finally decided to plant the other two Beccariophoenix along the East side of the house, along with a medium sized queen.  These were about 6 feet tall at the time.  I ended up transplanting the left side one up to the front yard this summer.

[Merlyn]

The SE garage area hasn't really changed much yet, I've been working on other areas since last July.  So other than adding some mulch and blocks to define the curve better, it's pretty much the same today.  What's consumed a huge amount of time, blood sweat and tears has been extracting the water oak stumps.  I really wanted to plant a silver Bismarck in the front, but my OCD demanded that it be in the center of the wall.  The minor problem?  A 4 foot diameter water oak was there, which flared out into a 10 foot diameter stump.  The Knights Who Say Ni have decreed that I must dig out the stump wiiiiiiith....a herring!!!

Actually I started out with a cheap electric chainsaw, and I went through 4 chains and bent one bar before discovering the sawzall!  It took me two whole weeks to slice up this stump and remove it, I almost gave up about a week into digging and only being able to slice off little pieces.  Then I discovered that the trunk was about 1 foot deep and then split into a whole bunch of 3" diameter small roots.  So I dug down about 6 inches and easily sliced through the smaller roots.  One vertical slice lopped off 1/4 of the stump in a single chunk:

After that I could slice out big chunks like this one with relative ease:

And I finally leveled it out and planted my first Bismarck on July 24th!  In the middle of the dig my neighbor brought over his Kubota and dug a nice hole for the Pygmy Date Palm double on the right side.  He tried to yank the stump out, but its lift capacity is only about 700lb and the stump didn't budge.  But he was digging out three mature Pygmy Dates and giving them to me for free, so I wasn't about to complain!!!  That's a 35 year old sago to the right of the Bismarck, it grew in 100% shade with zero fertilization, and probably flushed twice since I bought the house.  With sun it's already flushed 4 times.  I'll probably move it soon, since the Bismarck is going to block the sun again in about a year.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[OC2Texaspalmlvr]

17 minutes ago, Merlyn2220 said:

The Knights Who Say Ni have decreed that I must dig out the stump wiiiiiiith....a herring!!!

Awesome work @Merlyn2220 I have done some similiar type of work to put the palm in the perfect spot =) 

[Merlyn]

These are the next 2 big water oak stumps, almost as large each as that first one.  They were along the driveway on the NE corner, and I had to dig them out to extend the front yard bed over to the driveway.  The Beccariophoenix Alfredii and the Butia from my 7/20/19 post were planted basically in the center of the old stump locations.  These two monsters were a bit easier because they were cut down in 2015 and were partially rotten by the time I dug them in February 2019.  There were still some giant chunks, but it was a lot faster.  My neighbors thought I was clearly insane for digging huge holes by hand.  These only took 3 days of work, compared to almost 3 weeks for the first one!

Edited August 6, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Merlyn]

And here is the front view 1 year later, my "rainforest" area has filled in pretty nice!  I added several cheap Bottle and Spindle palms in doubles, knowing that they probably won't survive long-term.  The orange bird of paradise are all filled in and blooming, and some of the curcuma grew back.  The most cold-hardy of the tropicals at 33F were the big elephant ear in the front (unknown upright with thick black stems) and the "Truly Tiny" banana, both next to the Bismarck.  All the other alocasia and colocasia melted to the ground and took a long, long time to regrow. 

The Bismarck is now 6 feet overall, and just opened up two of the "nearly mature" diameter fronds.  It sees almost no direct sun December and January because of the roofline, but it seemed to keep growing at about the same rate as the one in the backyard that sees sun all year.  Hopefully it'll get enough height to start seeing the sun in winter!

[Darold Petty]

Merlyn,  your efforts make me tired just looking! Your new beds are really attractive.  Do you enjoy the stump removal work?  Such shallow stumps seem obvious candidates for a stump grinding machine, not too expensive, and easily towed behind a pick-up.   Nice Mustangs !!  

[Palmaceae]

6 hours ago, Darold Petty said:

Merlyn,  your efforts make me tired just looking! Your new beds are really attractive.  Do you enjoy the stump removal work?  Such shallow stumps seem obvious candidates for a stump grinding machine, not too expensive, and easily towed behind a pick-up.   Nice Mustangs !!  

I agree, looks great! I also say nice mustangs, both '68 coupes? I restored a '68 coupe years ago and I miss it.

[Merlyn]

Thanks!  I got a little burned out last fall, I'd spent hundreds of hours working on it and there were so many areas that didn't look like they were "done" yet.  I also didn't have a clear concept of the backyard layout except for the Sweet Viburnum hedge around the perimeter, the Sylvester, a couple of Pindos and the Beccariophoenix.  Everything else was up in the air.  That's partially because of my engineer's OCD, stuck on the spacing concept of, "These two palm's fronds shall never touch each other."  Once I saw @redant's jungle backyard, I was sold on the interspersing fronds and that allowed me to justify buying more palms to pack in there!  You'll see in some future posts I still need some symmetry, but it's not driving everything.

The Mustangs are (were) both 68 coupes, a 200 I6 and a 302.  The white one was my brother's, I helped him restore it in the late 80s.  Unfortunately the guy who stripped the chassis and acid-dipped it messed up.  He didn't neutralize the acid or prime it soon enough, so it started rusting from the inside out, every bit of the chassis was garbage by about 2000.  I was planning on restoring the red one and using the white one as a parts car, but I've had them for nearly 20 years and lost interest in it.  Instead I have some Miatas for fun and the big panel van for landscaping projects.  At some point I may drop a Corvette V8 in one of the Miatas, 450hp in a 2300lb car is a lot of fun!

On the stumps, they were all ground by the guys who took down the trees, but the grinder will only go about 12" deep.  I didn't want to pay a lot of extra $$ to them to "chase the roots" at the time, because I was only planning on digging out the one stump for the Bismarck.  Then I ran out of space for palms and dug out 5 more stumps this spring.  The first one took more than 2 weeks, but the last one only took me 4 hours start-to-finish.  When I have the front yard ones taken down I am definitely going to have them grind each one as deep as possible, so maybe I only have to slice out a few roots instead of the center of the trunk.

[Merlyn]

Since the heat index hit 120F by 11am, I decided to quit striving for heatstroke and go inside to the air conditioning.  Yesterday's 100 mile bike ride was enough punishment, so instead of digging here's the SW corner of the house!  Last April I planted a row of foxtails from Green's Nursery, thinking that they would appreciate the winter protection and would grow nice in that spot.  I made a big mistake with that bed and the blocks, it's not obvious from the photo:

• The blocks aren't flat-faced, so side-by-side they have a "V" shaped divot in the middle.  This turned out to be utterly ridiculous to trim when mowing the yard.  Not only did I continuously smack the lawnmower into them, but they shredded the weedwhacker cord and took forever to edge.
• I didn't pay attention to the level of the bed in both angle and height.  It's angled to flow water around the corner and down to the right, and also angled to flow water from the front (at the blocks) back towards the house.  Durrrrrrr.  Not only that, but overall it's about 6 inches too high and would be above the level of the future patio extension to the right.

After I had the trees cut down I realized that I needed some (sorta) instant canopy in that area, the room behind that window became the hottest in the house.  I picked up 4 big queens from Lakeshore Tree Farm in Lake Nona and moved the 3 center foxtails to the middle of the backyard.  I put 2 queens centered on the window and 2 more along the wall to the West.  The 3 tiny sweet viburnum shrubs are now 8 feet tall and full, growing more than twice as fast as any others in the yard.  The triple foxtail and double foxtail are both still there, and are now about up to the height of the gutter and thickening up their trunk diameter quickly.  I fertilized everything in May but I forgot to hit these two queens.  The left one is mostly okay but the right is suffering a bit in the heat.

The left side is my cycad nursery area, and the center and right is all palms and bananas.  I'm using a few cheap bottle palms as shade for the seedlings.  There are about 75 potted seedlings in that area, most of which I have no idea what to do with!  I was planning on weeding the pots today (before posting this picture) but it's just way too hot out there.  If it cools off a bit I'll get out and clean it all up.

[Merlyn]

Just turn 90 degrees to the left of the above two photos and you'll see where I spent most of my labor this spring.  This was one of the spots that burned me out last fall, because I really had no idea what I wanted to do.  I knew I wanted a walkway around the edge of the bed in the above picture, and am using the gap in the hedgeline on the upper right to make an entryway to the backyard.  But there were 5 trees cut down in this area and I was really dreading trying to take out any more stumps.  Last fall it looked like this, with a 5' tall Beccariophoenix Alfredii (from MB Palms) taking the prime planting spot.  The whole area was a mess of ferns and I'd just mowed them all down to reveal the tops of the stumps.  The tree guy did a poor job of grinding these.

After the mess of cutting out the first stump last summer, I had no interest in yanking out 5 more.  But it only took me 3 days to dig out the old rotten ones in the front yard (see above posts), and it was still nice and cool out in March so I used my newfound reciprocating saw skills to hack up two giant ones on the left (South) side.  This one took me only Saturday and Sunday and it was out and filled back in:

3 stumps on the right side took even less time, since I was smart enough to work on it in the evenings, when it was cooler and shady!  A couple of hours each evening during the week and then all day on a cool Saturday and it was done!

I left this area alone and just bare dirt until about a month ago, when I needed to take 6 inches of dirt out of the bed in the post above.  Since that dirt had to go somewhere, I just dumped it all in the middle of that area.  That was just the trigger I needed to figure out what I wanted to do in this area.  My wife wanted a *big* fire pit, but I wasn't sure if this would work with an overhanging palm/banana jungle in this area, but we decided that a nice mulched area would be good for one of the small metal fire pits.  So I dug down to make a recessed area where one of the stumps was, and used the dirt to raise the level in between.  Here's the "final" layout with a bit of it planted:

From left to right is an Encephalartos Laurentianus, big 2 frond Arenga Micrantha (both from PT member ChuckG), a Thai Black banana, an Ice Cream banana, the Beccariophoenix Alfredii (slightly leaning) with a Philodendron Selloum (Bipinnatifidum) behind it and a hidden small Arenga Pinnata behind that.  On the right of the bed is an Arenga Engleri clump from ChuckG, slightly leaning as well.  A huge storm came through and showed me that a few palms weren't quite solid in the ground.  The Beccariophoenix I planted a little bit too high, so I've staked it and filled in an inch or so more dirt around the trunk.  The Arenga Engleri was just loose from being tossed around in the van and just planted.  It's already pushing new fronds, a lot faster than the Arenga Micrantha.  That one is slowly pushing a new big stem in the center and a small new stem on one of the offsets.  I'm planning a river round rock walkway with big flat stones on the right, but I want to get all the weeds killed off before planting out this bed.

[Merlyn]

The center of the backyard bed has gone through a bunch of changes too, here's a sequence from last April through today.  Initially I planted a Sylvester, two "rescue Spindles" and a couple of Foxtails from Green's, with a wide row of white Bird of Paradise behind them.  Along the fenceline is a row of Sweet Viburnum.  This was before taking down ~10 water oaks in the backyard:

Over the summer I added a couple more Foxtails, pineapples, agaves, gingers and Ensete/Musella Lasiocarpum to each side.  My parents came to visit for Thanksgiving and we added some Oysters, Zamia Furfuracrea and a lot of mulch.  The Spindles were still mostly unhealthy but were starting to look a little better.  The Bird of Paradise went from 2 feet to over 5 feet on most of them.  I was unsure about the "Tricolor" gingers under the Sylvester, but they seemed to get just enough shade to handle the partial direct sun.  Off to the left is a lava rock bed for my agave collection, I'll get to that in a future post.

Over the winter and spring things didn't change too much, though the Spindles did not appreciate two nights at ~33F.  This disaster of weeds and assorted mess is what happens when I focus on digging out giant stumps (see previous post) and don't keep up with mulch and weeding.  The only change here in late March 2019 is that I moved the Foxtail doubles and triples to behind the row of Bird of Paradise.  I cleared that space for "future giants" that I wanted to plant on either side of the Sylvester.  On the left side you can see a 6' tall Encephalartos Ituriensis that I got from PT member ChuckG.  What a mess!

After I finished up the SW side with the seating/firepit area, I started moving across the bed.  This is the far right side of the bed in June 2019.  On the right are a couple of unknown red variegated bananas that I got from a neighbor, invisible behind them is a small Sabal Mauritiiformis in a partially-shaded spot.  The Encephalartos Ituriensis in the center is from ChuckG, and the Copernicia Macroglossa hybrid is from @NatureGirl.  There's a small Allagoptera Arenaria just to the right of the Macroglossa, and the Chinese bananas are growing like crazy on the left.

[Merlyn]

Here's what it looked like in late June with the "about to start cleaning up this disaster" view.  I'll guarantee I had more weeds than plants, but at least I was mowing the grass...er...weeds shorter.  The two Spindles are still severely potassium-deficient.  I'm attributing that to burn at ~33F and a dumb idea of putting some bonfire ash around them.  The added potassium from the ash might have helped, but it probably made the soil too alkaline for the plant to absorb nutrients!  The Sylvester and white Bird of Paradise are now definitely above the 6 foot fence height, and the Viburnum hedgeline is getting close!

But before I could extend the front edge of the bed I had to...yes...you guessed it!  Dig out some stumps!  Yay!  My favorite pastime!  Fortunately these two were drastically smaller and more rotten than most, one of them took me about 6 total hours of work on a Sunday:

The next weekend I dug out the other in about 4 hours from the center.  Check out the wide variety of local and imported hardy perennials I'm cultivating!

And a couple of weeks later I finished flattening the backyard so it sloped away from the house, arranged my landscape blocks into a nice arc and finished the planting!  I randomly found two big Spindles at a local Lowe's for $54 each, those went to the front outside.  One of the unhealthy Spindles went in front of the Sylvester, it may or may not be "edited out" depending on if it starts growing better without the ash in the soil.  Flanking the center are a Truly Tiny banana (R) and a Little Prince banana (L), which are wilty from the transplant but look great now.  One of the yellow variegated Agave Americana went to the right, and I ran into a weirdly asymmetric super-yellow-variegated Agave Americana at a Lowe's, that went to the left.  Across the front are ornamental "Lava Burst" pineapples and a "White Jade" in the center from Lukas Nursery.  Hidden behind the left Spindle is an Attalea Cohune from MyGardenOfDelights, and hiding to the right behind the other Spindle is a small Copernicia Fallaensis from MB Palms.  I don't have any good photos of these at the moment, I'll have to add some later.

[OC2Texaspalmlvr]

The amount of (literally) back breaking work is impressive. The amount of work you have put into your garden should be motivation to most. Your garden is coming along and look forward to future progression (photos)

The fact you can get A.Cohune and C.Fallanesis at your local nurseries still gives me palm envy haha 

[Dartolution]

Keep working on it @Merlyn2220 labor of love! haha

Looks great!

I dunno if you like this plant, but if you do, and like the foliage, Stromanthe thalia, (Triostar) is a very nice tropical looking plant to add color and texture. 

Here is monrovia's link. 

Triostar-Monrovia

And here's one from davesgarden:

Stomanthe - davesgarden

If you're around planting zone 10 you could give it a try. 

They are a "prayer plant" and they pivot the leaves toward the light all day. Quite interesting. 

They look beautiful other own, and pair well with caladiums around them. 

 

Looking back at the pictures you may already have them in your garden. 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Dartolution

[Merlyn]

Thanks Shawn!  I actually do have some of those in the front near the front door, and also around the Sylvester in the center of the back yard.  I was calling them "Tricolor" but "Triostar" is the correct patented name. 

The description on them says "full shade," but I've found they can take a decent amount of sun if they are acclimated to it.  I planted the ones around the Sylvester as an experiment, since that palm gets full sun from about 9am-4pm every day in the summer.  There were a few wilty leaves in the May drought, but they've been solid all summer with dripline watering every AM and just the shade from the Sylvester fronds.  The ones that really suffered are near the front door.  In the winter they are in full shade, but from June-September they get blasted by the sun from 10AM-2PM and they just burn to a crisp.  Fortunately the only growth that suffers are the ones that creep away from the house into the sunlight.  It took them 2 months to grow enough new sun-tolerant leaves in that blasting sun area, so I'm guessing if you had them in a semi-sunny spot all year that they'd eventually acclimate.  I'm going to try it, because they are one of my favorite accent plants.

For cold tolerance, I had them at the front door (full shade) for the cold snap in January 2018, where we hit mid to upper 20s a couple of nights.  They had a few burned leaves, but were mostly okay.  They were not significantly affected by the 2 nights at ~33F this past winter.  The front door area definitely has some radiant heat from the house, but they were way better off than my 75% defoliated Peace Lily right next to them.

[NOT A TA]

Another Mustang guy chiming in to say WOW! That's a LOT of work you've done by hand! And it's looking great!  I've got a '66 coupe.

[Merlyn]

Last July I bought a second small $50 Bismarck and (like many palms I buy) I had absolutely no idea where to put it.    Because I grew up with my grandfather's collection of giant agaves and cacti, I knew I wanted more agaves than just the couple in the front yard beds.  Just to the left (East) of the previous post there was an empty spot that used to have three smaller water oaks.  This made a perfect spot for the Bismarck and a big agave bed, so I put the Bismarck towards the back and started a layout.  The 8' tall Pygmy Date was one of the three big free ones from my neighbor, he was digging them out to clear space for a pool and didn't want them.  For once I didn't have to dig the hole myself, there was plenty of space for his father's tiny Kubota to dig some nice holes:

I planted the Bismarck about 2 inches too high, since I was planning on filling in around it and raising the bed.  Most of the agaves are pretty tolerant of some rain in the winter, but I wanted a good couple of inches of sand, rock and soil mix to keep them from getting waterlogged and rotting in the winter:

Here's the finished product with some smaller agaves in the front and a couple of big ones towards the back.  Clockwise from the Bismarck are Celsii Multicolor, Attenuata Boutin Blue, a type of brain-looking cactus, Ferox 'Stairway to Heaven,' Lophantha Splendida, Blue Glow, Dragon Toes, Durango Fandango, Americana Medio-Picta Alba, Chazaroi, Bluebell Giants, a couple of Weber, and a regular Attenuata in the back.  In the center is a Angustifolia, Ovatifolia 'Frosty Blue,' and a funky octopus wacko Vilmoriniana.  There are a few random Americana sitting in there just as fillers, since it looked pretty sparse to begin with.

In my previous post I finished the front edge of the center palm bed, and a couple of weeks ago I extended the same line across the front of the agave bed.  That added about 5 feet to the front.  I tried a few shapes and ended up doing a "flare out" instead of the "kidney" shape of the original bed.  The Pygmy Date and sago are now part of the bed, which worked out well because the Pygmy had grown a lot of air roots and ended up being a little bit too high after the ground settled.  I have about 20 more agaves to plant in this bed, but most are in significant shade and would get burned if I planted them now.  The fastest growers are definitely the Americana "fillers" but the wacko octopus, Bluebell Giants, Dragon Toes and Stairway to Heaven are right behind them.  The fastest offsetters are the Weberi, which have probably grown 10+ offsets per plant!  Fortunately they are not quite as stabby as the others, with no marginal teeth and soft leaves.  This photo was from about 2 weeks ago:

[Merlyn]

Moving on to the East a few feet, here's what it looked like in April 2018, just after clearing all the weeds and vines out of the SE corner of the lot.  I had planted 3 of the Ensete Maurelli red bananas in the corner because my wife loves them (and I like them too!) and had my first load of 10 yards of cypress mulch delivered.  It sounded like a good idea at the time, but picking up mulch off of the ground and putting it into a wheelbarrow is an IMMENSE amount of work, compared to having it dumped on the driveway and shoveling it.

After I had most of the water oaks cut down, my neighbor to the East (that's his fence and Queen) gave me a few mature Pygmy Dates that he was clearing out.  This is the weed-infested mess in July 2018, after the addition of a free multi-trunk Beaucarnea Recurvata from a friend and a couple of trunked sagos that a different neighbor dug out and tossed at the curb.  Note the tiny elephant ears at the base of the Queen Emma crinum lily on the bottom right...these grew to be utterly massive this year!

The center sago (right behind the single Pygmy Date trunk) died around November 2018, the leaves burned from Neem oil and too much sun.  it just rotted away so it went on the burn pile.  In April 2019 it still looked like a disastrous mess, with weeds taking over everywhere in the grassy area, the agave bed, pretty much everywhere there wasn't a really thick layer of mulch.  The only actual progress in this area since July 2018 was planting a few generic "Dwarf Cavendish" bananas and a Sylvester with about 1 foot of trunk, just in front of the ponytail.  I spent too much time digging up stumps and thinking about 11ty billion different layout options, and not enough time weeding and planting!

At this point I said, "Screw it, I am planting stuff!"

[Merlyn]

The first plantings in early April 2019 were a "back row" that preferred some shade, on the left is an Allagoptera Caudescens (from MB Palms), in the center an Arenga Australasica (GardenofEarthlyDelights) and on the right, near the agave bed, is an Arenga Engleri (also MB Palms).

Just to the left of the Allagoptera Caudescens I planted a Chambeyronia Macrocarpa (foreground from MB Palms), and behind it a Kerriodoxa Elegans (also MB).  On the far left you can see the 2-headed "rescue sago" is doing okay, as are the potato vines and wild grape vines, and the other assorted local and imported hardy perennials.

In front of the elephant ears I planted a small Copernicia Baileyana from MB Palms, this one is continually being overrun with weeds due to it's small size.  It's about 12 inches across in this photo, but it's been doing well over this summer!

Unfortunately the Arenga Australasica died pretty quickly.  I bought it bare rooted, and the night I received it and potted it up, a black bear decided to tromp across my back porch and stomped on it.  So I can understand why it withered and died within a few weeks.  Fortunately I found a nursery in Kissimmee that was going out of business, and they were selling 45G mule palms for $50!  This one made a good replacement and is adapting nicely, this photo is from the beginning of June 2019:

 

[Merlyn]

And the last for tonight, in the SE corner I planted one of the two Arenga Micrantha that I bought from ChuckG.  I will probably end up moving the red bananas because they really don't like the sandy soil in this corner of the yard.  I also need to hide my neighbor's new ugly chain link fence.  This photo was in February 2019, just before the 2nd head on the sago sprouted new fronds.

And last but certainly not least, I bought this utter monstrosity of an Encephalartos Hildebrandtii from ChuckG in June 2019 and it completely filled the entire van!  It's about 10 feet tall in the ground with 2 suckers off to the South side, and despite a little sunburn it seems pretty happy!  I planted a pair of Ice Cream bananas just to the West of it, to give it a bit of shade while it acclimatizes to the ~75% sun area.  The root ball was so packed in the garbage can/pot that I had to carefully slice the pot to pieces to get it out.  In the bottom right you can see an Encephalartos Whitelockii (also from ChuckG) that is being supported by some PVC pipes until it roots in place.  That Hildebrandtii weighed at least 400lb, so I wasn't too concerned about it toppling over!

[NOT A TA]

It's really hard to keep ahead of the weeds when landscaping a large area over time. Seems no matter where in the world we're working the weeds grow twice as fast as the plants we want to grow.

[ruskinPalms]

Fantastic yard! Your landscape bed with the Bizmarckia and all the agaves is going to look incredible in a few years. Actually, it will all look great in a few years. Thanks for posting!

[PalmCraze]

On 8/6/2019 at 10:18 AM, Merlyn2220 said:

And here is the front view 1 year later, my "rainforest" area has filled in pretty nice!  I added several cheap Bottle and Spindle palms in doubles, knowing that they probably won't survive long-term.  The orange bird of paradise are all filled in and blooming, and some of the curcuma grew back.  The most cold-hardy of the tropicals at 33F were the big elephant ear in the front (unknown upright with thick black stems) and the "Truly Tiny" banana, both next to the Bismarck.  All the other alocasia and colocasia melted to the ground and took a long, long time to regrow. 

The Bismarck is now 6 feet overall, and just opened up two of the "nearly mature" diameter fronds.  It sees almost no direct sun December and January because of the roofline, but it seemed to keep growing at about the same rate as the one in the backyard that sees sun all year.  Hopefully it'll get enough height to start seeing the sun in winter!

 

[PalmCraze]

Merlyn..it looks like that Bismark I'd fairly close to your house.

[Merlyn]

8 minutes ago, PalmCraze said:

Merlyn..it looks like that Bismark I'd fairly close to your house.

Yeah, it does look that way in the photo.  If I recall correctly it is about 10 feet from the house.  I might have some issues with the fronds hitting the eaves, but I figured that in the worst case I can clip a few leaves early.  I really wanted a Bismarck in that spot, but I also didn't want to have fronds overhanging the driveway too much.  Hopefully they'll be above "Miata height" next year so I won't have to worry about it! 

BTW - that is the bed where the random 2G green Chamaerops is currently living.  It's currently sitting just to the right of the Philodendron, but I don't think it was there when I took that photo, I'd been moving a few things around in that bed.  It actually looked pretty decent today, with about 2 inches of trunk and some new leaves.  Despite the huge amount of water it only has some mild fungus spotting on the oldest leaves right now.  I'm going to move it out into my new "garage bed" area on the left side of that photo, out in the open near the pile of mulch.  It'll probably be a lot happier there!

[PalmCraze]

That Bismark if it grows like mine have will be all over your eave. Mine are 15 feet tall now and huge 10 ft frongs. So yeah you'll be trimming but you'll also have palm shade!

I sank that grandaddy Euro Fan (one day I'll learn more latin..but fewer letters to type Euro Fan..lol).  It's definitely overkill for the bed... and the house..as my wife as pointed out. But I couldn't resist it.  The owner of the tree farm screwed up and sold a 200 gallon fan but he thought it was a 100..or knew and charged me for a 100 gallon. The guy that trailered it said he's never seen one that large in a pot. They would have charged more to help sink it but also charged less because they do stuff for the farmer and went by his invoice. I saved hundreds but the best thing is in place and looks amazing.  Tomorrow.. irrigation

[Merlyn]

Thanks for all the comments everyone!

I went out on that same section in the SE corner today and finished up the edges around the blocks.  Since it was blazing sun in the "garage bed" area I used up the rest of my last 10yd delivery of mulch, and finally covered over the rest of the dirt and weeds.  The baby Copernicia Baileyana is finally visible in the bottom right.  The shade from the monstrous elephant ears (which I am calling "Thai Giant" for now) might be way too much for it to grow well, so I'll probably have to move or cut down a couple of them.  They are also shading over the top of the small Chamaerops that's nearly invisible under the rightmost leaf.  The Ice Cream bananas on the left are doing a decent job of shading the Encephalartos Hildebrandtii, I'll probably move them elsewhere once it gets settled in and flushes a new set of (hopefully) sun-tolerant leaves.

[Merlyn]

And turning around 180 degrees from the above picture is the only "damage" from hurricane Dorian.  I had checked these Beccariophoenix Alfredii a few weeks ago and the right one was a little bit loose in the soil.  But I forgot to go back and stake it upright and add a little mounding soil.  The root initiation zone was just slightly up out of the soil, I am positive that I planted these at the right height initially.  I guess some of it washed away or settled down after I had all the trees removed last summer.  Either way, it looks like there aren't any broken large roots, so I washed in some sandy soil under the RIZ and staked/tied it to 3 pieces of 1" PVC pipe.  I'll have to keep an eye on it, but it looks pretty okay so far.  Right now the left one is about 8' tall overall, and the right one is about 7' tall.  I finished edging around the blocks last night when it was a lot cooler than 11ty billion degrees...

[Merlyn]

Here's some big changes in the East side and front yard!  Next to the garage were 3 smaller water oaks that were cut down last summer, and out in the open (now mulched) area were two more large water oaks and one really big live oak.  I didn't really want to take down the live oak, but it never really recovered from Hurricane Irma and had a number of large dead limbs.  The large Philodendron clump in the below photo is the same clump in the above post, just from the opposite side.  After finishing the left side border and the mulching, I decided that I needed a path to the backyard, preferably with a two-level effect.  I was considering putting a shrubbery there, but I have been unable to locate any local reputable shrubbers.  I suppose they must be under considerable economic stress at this period in history.  Oh well, I'll have to give up on it and just use palms.  At the far end of the path is an 8' tall Pindo (from Green's) on the left and Pygmy date on the right (from my neighbor), then up the right side are a Dypsis Pembana (MB Palms), a 15' Queen (HD), a Caryota Mitis (HD), an 8' Beccariophoenix Alfredii (MB Palms), an Agave Americana in temporary storage and an Encephalartos Laurentianus (ChuckG).  The center is wide open, with just a big pot with 3x Beaucarnea Recurvata and a double Ensete Maurellii on the left.   This is my next big planting area, after I finish cleaning up the pathway.  I kind of want to do something arching over the path, kind of like the ancient Irish roads with trees and shrubberies making a canopy.

To the left side of the above photo is the major death and destruction of the last week, a missing giant water oak!!!  I recently planted a Dioon Spinulosum (from ChuckG) in between the ponytail and the Magnolia, and added a Goldfinger, Ice Cream and a couple of unknown smaller bananas into the low area next to the driveway.  This is the area that floods on a daily basis all summer, so the bananas should love it there.  Behind the bananas and Spinulosum are a big Encephalartos Hildebrandtii (ChuckG) and a few pots of Zamia Furfuracea (various) and a big Encephalartos Ituriensis (also ChuckG), and 3 plastic wrapped Chamaerops humilis v. Argentea.  These will all go into the side yard or the front yard soon.

Speaking of which, here's the rest of the water oak death and destruction!  There were 3 smaller trunked ones on the left of the stump grinder and 3 monsters on the right side of the driveway.  On the far corner of the house (near the neighbor's blue truck) was an utterly enormous split trunk water oak, each half was 3-4 feet in diameter and the base was about 6-7 feet in diameter.  Fortunately the guy grinding the stumps appears to have done a great job, and went at least a foot underground on each one, so hopefully it'll be easy for me to just dig out a few roots to do new plantings!  It'll take a week or so to clean all this up, but now all the threatening water oaks are finally gone!  Only 3 big ones remain in the front yard, and they are leaning out towards the street and not threatening my house or my neighbors.

[Merlyn]

After the 8 big oaks came down and stumps were ground, I dug out most of the stump grindings and dumped them in the East edge along a Viburnum hedgeline.  It took 2 whole days and 34 wheelbarrows full of grindings, about 200 cubic feet/7.5 cubic yards!  With the front yard center leveled and in full blazing sun, it's time to replant!  I moved the big Agave Americana to the back yard, the two suffering Ravenea Rivularis to the edge of my "tropical bed" where they'll get tons of water.  An Agave Weberi Arizona Star takes the prime spot in the front and center, with two Dypsis Leptocheilos liners on the left (from PalmatierMeg) and two young Pindos on the right (from Green's).  Behind them is an Encephalartos Whitelockii on the left and an Encephalartos Tegulaneus on the right (both from ChuckG) and supported by some stakes.  Along the back drive edge from L to R are 2x Dwarf Namwah bananas, a Coccothrinax Argentea, Crinita and Barbadensis, and 2x Bordelon bananas:

Behind the van in the above photo there was a big oak.  I managed to find the irrigation lines on this side of the driveway while digging space for (L to R) a Thai Black, Goldfinger, random Zebrina type, Ice Cream and a potted Encephalartos Ituriensis (ChuckG).  This area gets flooded every day in the summer, I was asking for suggestions earlier in this thread.  The only logical choice seemed to be bananas, because they love the water and rich soil in this spot.  Any other suggestions for a 100% sun and very wet area would be great...Archontophoenix Cunninghamiana?

On the other side of the driveway I hit the same irrigation pipe, AGAIN!!!  It must bend under the driveway, because the two ends don't point at each other.  GRRRRRR. This is mostly planted with (L to R) random Zebrina, patched pipe, Kandarian banana, Ice Cream banana.  I planted the two variegated gingers near the driveway edge with one of the pots of Little Prince banana in between them.  You can just see the long-suffering Majesty palms behind the Kandarian.  They browned older leaves really bad and really fast after transplant, so I hope they make it!

[Merlyn]

I've been doing tons of small jobs, but one of the bigger and nastier ones was removing 10 fairly large Ensete Maurellii that all were getting crown rot in various stages.  The biggest one was almost 2 feet across at the base and I could push it over with one hand.  This is the base before I cut it up and bagged it for trash pickup.  I also had to dig out as much of the trunk as possible to get rid of the stinky rotten mess of phytophthora.  Any suggestions for sanitizing the area as much as possible?

In the SW corner I had split 3 Majesties up to fill the corner, but I needed a good part-shade place for an Arenga Pinnata with a bit of canopy for frost protection.  So the Majesties moved over near where the banana was, to hopefully block late afternoon sun next summer:

And in the SW corner there's the Arenga Pinnata from @carver back to the right (sorta hidden), a big Lepidozamia Peroffskyana from ChuckG in the middle and a newly opened leaf on an Arenga Micrantha (also from ChuckG) on the left:

[Merlyn]

The last major area is along the East fenceline.  The old fence was put in 15 years ago and for some bizarre reason my neighbor put it about 6 feet on his side of the property line.  My new neighbor installed the fence along the line, which is fine except that it's chainlink...yuck.  I ran viburnum as a sound-block hedgeline.  It's nowhere near as good at reducing the highway noise into my backyard, even with the viburnum.  I'm going to have to do a lot more to keep noise out, maybe 40' tall bamboo or something...  This pic was from August 2018:

You can see the chainlink in a few earlier photos.  Here's what it looks like in January 2020, with the chainlink and my "greenway" built back to the well.  The bananas on the left are Basjoo, regular dwarf Cavendisk in the center (one with bananas growing!), and the red Ensete Maurelli from the above photo all got crown rot and died over the summer. 

From the other direction I'm thinking about filling in the area between blocks as a secondary noise buffer.  There's a ton of noise coming through that chainlink, and a 30' deep section of solid plants will definitely help!  On the left is a Butia and two B. Alfredii.  On the right a "rescue" sago, a Sylvestris hiding behind the giant Encephalartos Hildebrandtii, and an Encephalartos Whitelockii being supported by the PVC. 

[kinzyjr]

OK, maybe you do need an intervention...

[Merlyn]

5 minutes ago, kinzyjr said:

OK, maybe you do need an intervention...

Not yet, let me finish building it first!!! 

[Dartolution]

@Merlyn2220 What about planting passionfruit vine on the fence? Passionfruit grows very fast and looks nice. Just a thought.