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

[Merlyn]

Almost 20 years ago I escaped the frozen tundra of Michigan and moved into the sauna of NW Orlando.  It's hard to describe the abrupt transition, but I was pretty sure that I moved into an oven.  Despite the oppressive heat and humidity in the summer, it was far better than spending September-April indoors and never seeing the sun!

I lucked out when I moved, as I bought very cheap just before a huge price jump in the Orlando housing market.  I found a nice house on about 3/4 acre of land with a great looking canopy of about 40 big oaks and a few pines.  What I did *not* luck out on is my ignorance of southern oak trees.  I didn't know that they were *not* the typical Northern red oaks with strong root systems and 200+ year lifespans.  Nope, I had 40+ "Water Oaks" (Quercus Nigra) that have a 30-50 year life span, shallow root systems and really weak limbs.  Branches fall on a nearly daily basis, punching holes in my roof, denting my cars and making a continuous mess of the yard.  Hurricanes came through and mangled the oaks, taking several down and pushing others over sideways, cracking my driveway in several places.  I was annoyed by basically everything in the yard and just ignored it for at least 15 years.  I spent all my time training for and racing Ironman Triathlon and various Ultramarathons, racking up over 50,000 miles biking and 10,000+ miles running.

After years of indecision and neglect I finally started to tame the jungle of weeds and ferns, starting with taking down about 15 water oaks and a couple of tall pines in 2015.  Below are the "before" pictures, with a full canopy of water oaks and a huge crop of ferns.  When I first started my palm obsession I found the PalmTalk build threads incredibly useful.  What follows is my journal, documenting building my own tropical paradise in a little corner of NW Orlando.

 

Edited July 16, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Merlyn]

After taking down the first oaks, we started on the front yard.  Around the summer of 2017 the bare dirt and weeds had been replaced with a couple of large beds to give some shapes to work with.  The third picture in December 2017 was the very beginning of my tropical obsession, starting with a few Hawaiian Ti and Xanadu Philodendron.  I always liked the giant Peace Lily near the front door, it was actually planted by the builder of the house back in the 1980s!

[redant]

While the shade from those oaks is a blessing when the sun is blasting down on the house, it's a curse when the storms come.  When I built my home I had several large pines next to the building site that against my wife's wishes, I had taken down. Not wanting a giant old pine crashing into my home in a storm.

[RJ]

15 hours ago, Merlyn2220 said:

Almost 20 years ago I escaped the frozen tundra of Michigan and moved into the sauna of NW Orlando.  It's hard to describe the abrupt transition, but I was pretty sure that I moved into an oven.  Despite the oppressive heat and humidity in the summer, it was far better than spending September-April indoors and never seeing the sun!

 

 

I made a similar move although not as far south I moved from far northern New England. I don't miss it in the least. I certainly can relate to the oak's though. Although I was at the FAR northern range for Red oaks and white oaks, I had some here and there on my 75 acre property. I mostly had Sugar maple, ash, elm, and bitternut hickory. Sometimes I wish I has moved a little further south for palm variety but I still get seasons here and can be in the mountains for a ski in two hours or to the beach on the ocean in less then two hours. 

 

Looking good! Perhaps start some live oak canopy ? 

[NC_Palms]

2 hours ago, RJ said:

 Perhaps start some live oak canopy ? 

Yes! Even thought oaks can be messy, a canopy is a good way to preserve energy and to create a mico climate.  

[Merlyn]

Although I like the live oaks that some of my neighbors have, my wife is severely off-the-charts allergic to oak pollen.  She grew up with Magnolias around (and isn't allergic to them) so I'm pretty much stuck with palms and magnolias.  

The last straw for me on the water oaks was hurricane Irma.  Though it didn't have huge winds, it had a lot of rain in our area.  I watched a neighbor's 80 foot tall, 7 foot diameter water oak teeter back and forth and then one gust of wind knocked it down.  It fell squarely between their house and their RV, and it would have utterly crushed either of them.   Last summer I had 15 more cut down in the backyard and now only have 10 left in the front yard.  The lack of canopy really hurts my power bills, it probably adds $100 per month in the middle of summer.  But at least a couple of the oaks were hollow and rotten in the center, and they absolutely would have come down in the next hurricane.

[Tropicdoc]

Water oaks fell here on houses and power lines this past weekend with only tropical storm force winds. Terrible landscape trees. Glad I have none around me.... just live oaks.

[Eric in Orlando]

Laurel and Water Oaks are the worst trash trees in urban landscapes. Luckily the hurricanes since 2004 have helped correct this and taken many out.

[sonoranfans]

If you plant live oak canopy it will not grow fast enough for you to plant some of the faster crownshafts like royals or archies.  My live oak to the south are constantly growing into my palms which are now(8 years later) catching up to them.  the line of oaks started at 15' overall and are 25-30' now with only 17'-18' of clearance under canopy.  So I removed 2 oaks in the yard and radically trimmed the ones to the south.  I think getting a good big canopy like merlyn has is another story, lots of headroom for palms.  In my case the oaks were planted ~3 yrs before the palms and now 8 years after the palms were planted they caught the oaks.  Live oak branches are VERY tough and will shred your palm leaves in the wind if you allow them to grow together.  My point being that you need an older canopy unless you want to wait 20 years for a new one to grow.

[Merlyn]

5 hours ago, sonoranfans said:

If you plant live oak canopy it will not grow fast enough for you to plant some of the faster crownshafts like royals or archies.  My live oak to the south are constantly growing into my palms which are now(8 years later) catching up to them. 

Thanks for the growth rate info, that's pretty much what I thought would happen.  I considered putting in some live oaks, before learning that my wife was severely allergic to them.  But I gave up on that when I realize that some palms grew just as fast as young live oaks.  So my plan (once I picked my tropical direction) was to use a few taller and faster growing palms (Sylvesters, Queens and Chinese) to help provide some "instant shade" for a few areas.  I mixed in some tall, super fast growing bananas (Ice Cream and "False Red Abyssynium" are my fastest) to give a little protection for the smaller palms. 

The triple hurricanes in 2004 just made a mess of branches in my yard, but "strength in numbers" meant I only lost 1 oak in all of the storms.  I cleared the back yard (South side of the house) and both side yard areas of all oaks and pines, so the only ones left are in the front and a couple along the South fenceline.  They are far enough from the house that they can't hit it, but they'd cause some serious palm damage if they fall or drop big limbs.  I'm sure I'll have to cut them down eventually, but my priority are any dying ones or ones within falling distance of the house.  It's going to easily cost me $15-20k to take down all those stupid water oaks.  Grrrr....I curse the people who built the house and actually *planted* all of those oaks on purpose!

Edited July 17, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Tropicdoc]

I think are some palmtalkers who also like their pine canopy for palms. If I could get a crownshafted palm to reach up to my live oak canopy, I'd be doing a happy dance.

[Merlyn]

in the spring of 2018 the backyard was a complete mess of weeds, ferns, and leftover oak trunks from the ones we cut down in 2015.  I had the tree guys leave trunks for me to cut up into firewood, but my wife's severe oak and mold allergies meant that she couldn't be around them inside or outside.  So I had to cut up and burn all the old trunks, we pretty much had a daily burn pile for about a month that spring.  Finally it was all cleaned up and most of the weeds mowed down, so I got 10 yards of cypress mulch dropped into the corner.  I almost had a blank canvas, but there were still about 10 big oaks back there to remove.

I highly recommend a plug-in electric chainsaw if you are within extension cord reach of an outlet.  I used a $100 Homelite one and it worked amazingly well.  They are the opposite of gas chainsaws, but they have three big advantages.  They produce maximum torque at a dead stop, so it's easy to get cuts started and very difficult to actually bind them up.  And they have very low rotating mass and low torque at maximum RPM, so there's very low kickback.  The saw is also very lightweight and zero vibration, so it's easy on the arms, hands and shoulders.  The only downside of the cheap Homelite one is that the bar is pretty flexible and the clamp/adjuster doesn't keep the chain tension for very long.

[Merlyn]

In April 2018 I started my first layout attempt in the back yard, putting a row of Viburnum a couple of feet from the fence and a big arc of White Bird of Paradise a few feet in front of that.  I found a smallish $65 Phoenix Sylvestris for the center, since we were planning on building a patio and didn't have the space for a Canary.  A couple of spindly Foxtail doubles and triples on each side and a pair of "rescue" Spindles from Green's Nursery gave me a basic start. 

At this point I still knew next to nothing about palms, but my wife and I really liked pinnate palms and thought of fan palms as weeds.  We had 5 or 6 giant clumps of razor-edged saw palmettos back there that I'd dug out, so at that point I had zero interest in adding palms that I thought would all slice up my legs.

In the SE corner I rescued 3 sagos that a neighbor had dug up and tossed at the curb.  They were thoroughly infested with cycad scale, but a couple of treatments with Dinotefuran soil drench and alternating Malathion and Acephate foliar spray killed them all off.  Unfortunately I burnt the tiny new fronds on one of them with neem oil so it rotted and died.  But the 2 headed one and the tallest one are still around and recovering!  The neem oil did absolutely nothing against the scale anyway, all it did was burn the leaves in the summer sun.  I picked up 3 of the red bananas from Lowe's and put them in an arc in the corner.  The sagos will all end up moving again, since a friend gave me two big multi-trunk Beaucarnea Recurvata (Ponytail Palms) a few weeks later.

[Merlyn]

Whups, too late to edit the last post.  I duplicated a picture, and meant to post this one.  It's just a view along the fenceline with spacing for the Viburnum and white bird of paradise.

[RJ]

On 7/17/2019 at 3:28 PM, Tropicdoc said:

I think are some palmtalkers who also like their pine canopy for palms. If I could get a crownshafted palm to reach up to my live oak canopy, I'd be doing a happy dance.

I have always wondering how pine works for canopy. Seems pretty sparse to me to do a whole lot... 

 

@Merlyn2220 Great work, it doing to look fantastic in a couple years. A labor of love 

[redant]

2 hours ago, RJ said:

I have always wondering how pine works for canopy. Seems pretty sparse to me to do a whole lot... 

 

@Merlyn2220 Great work, it doing to look fantastic in a couple years. A labor of love 

I have lots of very old native slash pines, they produce decent shade but litter everything with needles and pinecones. The needles are very acidic, great for any acid loving plants but not great for the non acid lovers.

Merylyn, hope you have a fireplace for all that oak lol.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2019 by redant

[Merlyn]

The oak trunks were great the first two winters, I probably cut and split a full cord of wood and it did great in the living room fireplace.  It took a while to figure out my wife's allergies, and by then it was too rotten to even consider burning it in the fireplace.

The West side of the house is somewhat exposed to NW winds, and the only time I see that side of the house is really when I'm mowing the yard.  So I wanted stuff that would be fairly cheap, grow by itself, and provide some shade to the West wall.  In April I ran across a couple of 2-3' trunk Livistona Chinensis at a HD near me.  They had been wrapped in plastic and sat out in front of the store over the winter, and no one wanted them.  I think I paid $100 each and set them to "frame" the side wall.  I picked up 4 kinda ratty looking queens from Green's Nursery for about $30 each and added a couple of small Chinensis on each side of the larger ones.  I picked up a Phoenix Reclinata from Green's for about $50 and put it in the center behind the oak.

My theory was that the Queens would grow quickly for shade and the Reclinata would grow up behind it.  I was already planning on removing the two water oaks, and I figured that I could cut down one or more of the Queens if they became a problem in storms. 

The 4th photo is in early July 2018 just after the tree removal, you can see how bright it is there in the afternoon, and how horrible the paint is on that wall!  I picked up a couple more queens from Lakeshore Tree Farm in the Lake Nona area for $45 each, they were in much better shape and 12-15' tall in the ground.  The red banana on the S side of the line of palms is growing rapidly, and I also added a couple of variegated yellow-green gingers for some filler in the middle.  You can also see one of my three my dripline setups next to the AC compressor.

[The7thLegend]

That's a lot of work but your tropical paradise is looking great!

[Merlyn]

And here's a photo from this evening, almost exactly one year after the 4th photo above.  The queens have pretty much doubled in height, the Reclinata is pretty monstrous, the Chinese have both grown several new tall fronds, and that red banana on the far right now dwarfs pretty much everything.  The banana is leaning a bit right now, we got a huge windstorm last week that pushed it about to a 30 degree angle.  I'm probably going to cut off the lower set of fronds on the Livistona, those are all the original stunted ones from about 1.5 years ago.  It took them around 6 months to grow enough roots to show any new spear growth.

[kinzyjr]

@Merlyn2220 Nice work and documentation of said work!  Everything is starting to fill in and it looks great.

[OC2Texaspalmlvr]

Nice work @Merlyn2220  Love the progression. The tropical palm look is definitely there now =) 

[Merlyn]

Thanks!  Of all the areas in the yard, I'm probably happiest with the West side.  The soil on that side is a bit richer/less sandy than other areas, so everything grows a bit faster.  Except for one area of a pervasively annoying weed, I haven't had to do much maintenance over there.  I think it's about $550 in plants and $100-150 in landscaping blocks.

The one weed that's irritating me a LOT is this stuff, which I can't seem to kill back.  Glyphosate doesn't seem to touch it, and it regrows immediately even if I think I've pulled it all out.  The annoying part is that it grows in my container ranch, and if forms a pretty thick root mat near the surface.  If I don't keep on top of pulling it out, it quickly fills my cycad and palm seedling pots.  Any ideas on what this stuff is and how to kill it?  I was thinking "lawn burweed" but it seems to like sun or shade and the surface is slightly waxy.

[Dartolution]

Beautiful work, amazing growth in a year! wow!

[sonoranfans]

I have this weed too, its a very tough one.  Its in my yard and containers.  I have tried the roundup mix(its potent) and it seems to slow or stall things but no obvious kill.

 

On 7/17/2019 at 11:56 AM, Merlyn2220 said:

Thanks for the growth rate info, that's pretty much what I thought would happen.  I considered putting in some live oaks, before learning that my wife was severely allergic to them.  But I gave up on that when I realize that some palms grew just as fast as young live oaks.  So my plan (once I picked my tropical direction) was to use a few taller and faster growing palms (Sylvesters, Queens and Chinese) to help provide some "instant shade" for a few areas.  I mixed in some tall, super fast growing bananas (Ice Cream and "False Red Abyssynium" are my fastest) to give a little protection for the smaller palms. 

The triple hurricanes in 2004 just made a mess of branches in my yard, but "strength in numbers" meant I only lost 1 oak in all of the storms.  I cleared the back yard (South side of the house) and both side yard areas of all oaks and pines, so the only ones left are in the front and a couple along the South fenceline.  They are far enough from the house that they can't hit it, but they'd cause some serious palm damage if they fall or drop big limbs.  I'm sure I'll have to cut them down eventually, but my priority are any dying ones or ones within falling distance of the house.  It's going to easily cost me $15-20k to take down all those stupid water oaks.  Grrrr....I curse the people who built the house and actually *planted* all of those oaks on purpose!

 

[Kailua_Krish]

Is it artillery fern? I had those too in Ocala but thought they were kind of attractive so never really bothered too much with them.

[RJ]

Did you try good old boiling water on it to kill it? Sorry no idea what it is. 

[Barry]

This will kill that weed, went to the agricultural extension and this is what they recommended to kill it. I mix with roundup and it works. Still comes back, but it will knock it down. Get it from Tractor Supply locally.

[Merlyn]

6 minutes ago, Barry said:

This will kill that weed, went to the agricultural extension and this is what they recommended to kill it. I mix with roundup and it works. Still comes back, but it will knock it down. Get it from Tractor Supply locally.

Very cool, thanks!  2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacedic acid could be a good addition to my weed control efforts!  It looks like it's a selective herbicide absorbed through the leaves, so it may be safe sprayed next to palm trunks.  2,4-D looks pretty widely available, in about 45% concentration a gallon is around $30.  That's definitely reasonable, maybe with a bit of soap to help it stick that'll knock back that annoying weed!

I looked at a lot of other options and most had residual soil/root absorbtion.  I'm not spraying stuff like that next to my palms! 

 

[Silas_Sancona]

1 hour ago, krishnaraoji88 said:

Is it artillery fern? I had those too in Ocala but thought they were kind of attractive so never really bothered too much with them.

Believe so,  Had this stuff all over the place at the house in Bradenton, and in pretty much everything at the nursery i worked for in Sarasota as well.. very tough to control. Roundup did nothing. UF/ IFAS has a pretty good write up about it and whats recommended to control it.  Have seen it occasionally in plants shipped from florida here in Arizona also. Luckily, our sun / heat is more than enough to control any that might escape ideal conditions at the nursery, lol. 

[Merlyn]

UF/IFAS recommend a pre-emergent and foliar spray because they seed prolifically.  They recommend something like Ronstar (oxadiazon) or Dimension (dithiopyr) and say Roundup is mostly useless against it.  Roundup apparently works pretty well for a couple of weeks and then it roars right back:

https://mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/foliage/resrpts/rh_94_7.htm

[Merlyn]

While the West side yard was pretty much planted-and-done by the middle of last summer, the front yard is still going through continuous changes.  I'm still not done, since I have about 6 oaks to take down.  The sudden change from shade to full sun will probably fry some of the stuff there, so I'll have to move things around again.  In the fall of 2017 I grabbed an Agave Americana and dropped it in the middle of the bed as my focal point.  I really had no idea what else to put there, since I hadn't decided to go full tropical yet.  In the below picture I'd planted a pair of Agave Lophantha and Desmettiana in an arc across the front, a couple of $20 Majesty palms behind them, a pygmy date on the "right point" and a pair of sagos on the "left point."  In the center I planted five different Australian Tree Ferns as my tall center focus. 

In the summer of 2018 I got a pair of nice ~3' tall sagos and put those in the "driveway corners" along the back of the bed, added a few variegated gingers and some "Rojo Congo" philodendrons in the middle.  The tree ferns immediately burned and died in August right after I took down a huge oak in front of the garage, though the real problem was lack of water and not the sun.  Apparently some ferns can't take ever drying out, and won't recover.  So the center in the back is a Dypsis Lutescens clump temporarily, I later moved that to the back yard.  On the far right I moved the pygmy date and put another Reclinata at the "point" to give a little more height in that area.  The below picture is from February 2019.  The Majesties yellowed a bit in the September 2019 drought/heatwave because I didn't have a working sprinkler setup in that area, and a couple of ~33F nights in January didn't help!  The tricolor gingers along the front edge worked great in the winter, but they can't tolerate much direct sun.  I also painted most of the house around the end of the year, I always hated that dark brown paint.

This spring I abandoned my desire for symmetry and extended the left (East) side of the front yard bed over to the driveway.  I planted the surviving half of a Pindo double (from Green's) on the left, a couple of different pineapples in the middle in front of a Beccariophoenix Alfredii (from MB Palms), a Bottle on the right and an Agave Americana Medio-Picta Alba just to the right of the Bottle.  Just behind that is another Reclinata (from Green's) and a hidden Livistona Chinensis triple along the driveway behind the Bottle.  Off to the right side are an Agave Angustifolia Marginata and an Agave Celsii Multicolor on the right edge.  Eventually I'll have to do some judicious "editing" because there's way too many palms in a small area, but the Bottle is not a long-term survivor here due to relatively frequent cold fronts in the mid 20s. 

A couple of weeks ago I finally got the time and inclination to clean up the front edge, just in time for Independence Day.  I also moved the Dypsis Lutescens cluster to the back yard and put a couple of bananas in the center for some instant height.  The tricolor gingers started really frying around April, so I moved them to shadier spots and put some smaller Lophantha agaves and red Coleus along the center.  I also added a couple of baby Dypsis Leptocheilos (from PalmatierMeg), a pair of baby Archontophoenix Cunninghamiana, 4 Dwarf Namwah bananas, a Weber's "Arizona Star" Agave and in the center a Chambeyronia Macrocarpa from MB Palms.  I'll have to get a better photo of the center of the bed, but the below picture is from the 4th and is a great comparison from my original post of dirt and oaks!

[Merlyn]

On the East side near the garage I planted a couple of freebies from a friend.  The two 3' trunk sagos in the above post were free from him too, and he also gave me a 5' trunk sago and a big ponytail palm that we've nicknamed "Cousin It."    The small sago is a transplant from the NW side of the house and is a whopping ~35 years old!  That's what happens to a sago in dense shade and no fertilizer!  The water oak here is eventually coming down too.  These pictures are from June 2018.

From the other side you can see the double Pindo I planted.  Unfortunately one trunk met an untimely demise when I had a bunch of oaks taken down.  The tree guys left on one branch too many, and when they dropped the trunk that branch slammed into the trunk nearest to the camera.  About 2 weeks later the spear died, followed rapidly by the rest of the fronds.  The other trunk was fine, so I left it for now.

In October 2018 I dug up the previously-double Pindo and dropped it back into a pot for future use.  I sliced off the dead trunk with a reciprocating saw, it was clearly dead and dried out.  That one ended up in the front yard.  It's on the left side of the 3rd and 4th photos in the previous post.  My wife really wanted a Magnolia, so this was a perfect spot for one.  It's a 12' tall $100 "DD Blanchard" type from a Lowe's.  It was a spur-of-the-moment buy, since normally their $100 size is about half that height.  I went back the next day to buy another and they were all gone!  It was only a little big rootbound, so it's grown well and has put out 2 bunches of leaves this spring.

This bed looks pretty much the same today, right now it's a storage spot for some big Dioon Edule and Encephalartos Ituriensis that I bought from PT member ChuckG.  I haven't decided what to do with it yet.  After I get the oak taken out I will probably dig up the stump and plant some Ice Cream bananas for some instant height.  Originally I was going to do a little "sago forest," but my neighbor's sagos are all infested with scale and it's been a hassle keeping it off of mine.  Any ideas? 

Edited July 21, 2019 by Merlyn2220

[Dartolution]

Have you tried neem oil or spinosad for the scale? I dunno if it will work but neem tends to do the trick for pests that I have, though I never have dealt with scale before. 

 

Maybe chamaerops humilis? sorry, I'm partial to this species haha

[Kailua_Krish]

Get a bunch of Ceratozamia, robusta or mexicana. They look great and the only thing they won’t tolerate there is flooding (I lost a bunch of mine to that)

[Merlyn]

My solution for scale is a Dinotefuran soil drench and then alternating weekly sprays of Malathion and Acephate.  I put my used espresso grounds on them too, though that hasn't worked as a primary scale killer.  I had all of them clean late last summer and only the two next to the rock (in the above pictures) got infested this summer.  They are directly across the street from my neighbor's heavily infested ones.  Neem oil didn't affect the scale when I tried it last summer, it just burned the leaves.

I actually do have two Chamaerops Humilis, one is clearly a green one and the other is (I think) a silver-blue Argentea/Cerifera type.  It's actually sitting next to the Magnolia right now, but I haven't decided to plant it there yet.  I also do have a Ceratozamia Mexicana var. Latifolia that I bought from Tom Broome (cycadjungle on here).  That area is downhill from the garage, all the water from that side of the roof goes straight onto the concrete and floods that area almost daily in the summer.  That's kind of why I was thinking bananas or other things that love (or can tolerate) lots and lots of water.

[sonoranfans]

@Merlyn2220 I use organicide on scale, works great and is non toxic to bees and animals.    https://www.yourplantdoctor.com/organocide-3-in-1-garden-spray-blog/

• It kills the eggs, larvae, nymphs and adult stages of over 25 soft bodied insects including (but not limited to) aphids[1], chinch bugs[2], citrus rust mites, flea egg & larvae, fuchsia mites, fungus gnats[3], hemlock wooly adelgid, leaf-rollers, mealy bugs, psyllids, scale[4], spider mites, thrips, and whiteflies[5].

[Dartolution]

12 hours ago, Merlyn2220 said:

My solution for scale is a Dinotefuran soil drench and then alternating weekly sprays of Malathion and Acephate.  I put my used espresso grounds on them too, though that hasn't worked as a primary scale killer.  I had all of them clean late last summer and only the two next to the rock (in the above pictures) got infested this summer.  They are directly across the street from my neighbor's heavily infested ones.  Neem oil didn't affect the scale when I tried it last summer, it just burned the leaves.

I actually do have two Chamaerops Humilis, one is clearly a green one and the other is (I think) a silver-blue Argentea/Cerifera type.  It's actually sitting next to the Magnolia right now, but I haven't decided to plant it there yet.  I also do have a Ceratozamia Mexicana var. Latifolia that I bought from Tom Broome (cycadjungle on here).  That area is downhill from the garage, all the water from that side of the roof goes straight onto the concrete and floods that area almost daily in the summer.  That's kind of why I was thinking bananas or other things that love (or can tolerate) lots and lots of water.

 

Im fairly sure Chamaerops humilis is a sun loving palm. I wouldn't plant in below a magnolia that is going to shade it a ton. 

They tend to do better if given full sun (and they can handle 10 hours a day), and good drainage. 

 

 

[Merlyn]

4 hours ago, Dartolution said:

Im fairly sure Chamaerops humilis is a sun loving palm. I wouldn't plant in below a magnolia that is going to shade it a ton. They tend to do better if given full sun (and they can handle 10 hours a day), and good drainage.

Based on the sun's path in the summer, I could plant one right where the oak is now.  It would get full sun in the summer but no mid-day sun in the winter.  I'll have to look at it more once the oaks are finally gone.  That area will be pretty exposed to NW winds, so I probably won't want to plant frost-tender stuff in that spot.  I do have some Copernicia Prunifera strap-leaf seedlings, and a couple of big Sabal Causiarum strappers from Josh-O.  I also have to pick a good spot for a couple of big Encephalartos from ChuckG, a Tegulaneus, Ituriensis, Whitelockii and Hildebrandtii.  I kinda want something that will get tall enough to "arch" over the driveway, but it's got to grow tall enough, fast enough to get over the van's considerable height.

[Dartolution]

8 minutes ago, Merlyn2220 said:

Based on the sun's path in the summer, I could plant one right where the oak is now.  It would get full sun in the summer but no mid-day sun in the winter.  I'll have to look at it more once the oaks are finally gone.  That area will be pretty exposed to NW winds, so I probably won't want to plant frost-tender stuff in that spot.  I do have some Copernicia Prunifera strap-leaf seedlings, and a couple of big Sabal Causiarum strappers from Josh-O.  I also have to pick a good spot for a couple of big Encephalartos from ChuckG, a Tegulaneus, Ituriensis, Whitelockii and Hildebrandtii.  I kinda want something that will get tall enough to "arch" over the driveway, but it's got to grow tall enough, fast enough to get over the van's considerable height.

 

If your wanting to see something that will grow to arch over the driveway, Chamerops Humilis probably won't cut it for you. They tend to grow slowly and are not the tallest palm either. You'd probably be dead and dust by the time it got some good trunk on it unless you purchased a mature specimen. 

 

[Merlyn]

Yeah, the one I have is about 1.5' of trunk and maybe 5' tall in the ground.  My neighbors have a nice one that's about 8' tall overall, but it's been in that spot for about 15 years...    I wasn't really thinking about that arching until I came home from a bike ride today, and noticed that I have a big Ituriensis (12-15' fronds) on one side and a big Hildebrandtii (8-10' fronds) on the other side.  They are in pots now, but might make a good left-right pair after the oaks are gone.