Norway

[janAVik]

Hello everybody 

I'm relatively new in this beautiful world of palm trees 🌴  but I love them and offcourse  with my dumb luck I am born and raised I Norway, but the silver lining is that I live on the all the way down south In a small town called Farsund.

But it's a hassle to find companies that ships to norway because we are not a member off the EU (we want all the oil money to ourselves 🙈) 

If there is one soul here that knows about someone who ships to Norway, please let me know.

[Darold Petty]

Welcome to Palmtalk !  

 

 

[Than]

59 minutes ago, janAVik said:

Hello everybody 

I'm relatively new in this beautiful world of palm trees 🌴  but I love them and offcourse  with my dumb luck I am born and raised I Norway, but the silver lining is that I live on the all the way down south In a small town called Farsund.

But it's a hassle to find companies that ships to norway because we are not a member off the EU (we want all the oil money to ourselves 🙈) 

If there is one soul here that knows about someone who ships to Norway, please let me know.

Welcome! Trying to raise palms in Norway, a real fearless Viking! What are you growing already?

[janAVik]

The vikings would have loved som juicy dates, but maybe they would decapitated me for trying something that stupid 😅 

[MarcusH]

1 hour ago, janAVik said:

Hello everybody 

I'm relatively new in this beautiful world of palm trees 🌴  but I love them and offcourse  with my dumb luck I am born and raised I Norway, but the silver lining is that I live on the all the way down south In a small town called Farsund.

But it's a hassle to find companies that ships to norway because we are not a member off the EU (we want all the oil money to ourselves 🙈) 

If there is one soul here that knows about someone who ships to Norway, please let me know.

 Welcome to Palmtalk 

In order to understand your climate you need to let us know the city/ village you live in so we can determine what can grow there or not. I'm not 100 percent sure but I would expect all parts of Norway to be too cold to grow any palm tree outdoor unprotected.  

But before I continue we need some more information about your location.  

 

[janAVik]

https://en.climate-data.org/europe/norway/west-agder/farsund-9884/

 

[bgl]

Hej Jan, 

Välkommen till PalmTalk!  I remember, years ago we had a PalmTalk member who lived in Ålesund and successfully grew a number of palms there. The positive influence of the Gulfstream may be more pronounced in Ålesund than in Farsund, but on the other hand you're further south, which means you will have a bit more daylight during the critical winter months.

The Palm Centre (owned by Martin Gibbons) in Richmond, SW London, specializes in hardy palms. No idea if they would ship to Norway but you can always check with them.

Lycka till och Aloha från The Big Island of Hawaii! 

Bo-Göran

[janAVik]

Yes I have talked to him, there ate many people who tries. Bit I don't think they are patience enough. 

Thanks for the tip, I'm gonna check him out, we also have henning pedersen who own www.frilandspalmer.dk who lives I Denmark, so it's not a long drive down to him, as well as the German border.

Hawaii you litle fuck face, that's one of the many places I want to move to 🌴🙌

[N8ALLRIGHT]

It doesn't look like you have much summer heat , but relatively mild winters, so my guess is to try a trachycarpus fortunei. The usual cold hardy suspects like needles or sabal minors will resent your cool summers. Trachycarpus ( windmill) seem to thrive in places like the PNW and all over Europe in not very palmy sounding places like England.  Maybe RPS for seeds? Good luck 

[L.A.M.]

8 hours ago, MarcusH said:

 Welcome to Palmtalk 

In order to understand your climate you need to let us know the city/ village you live in so we can determine what can grow there or not. I'm not 100 percent sure but I would expect all parts of Norway to be too cold to grow any palm tree outdoor unprotected.  

But before I continue we need some more information about your location.  

 

Farsund has a very similar climate to Swadlincote, where I had a former love interest that was growing palms. Based on that, it's probably too cold for Canary Island date palms (which he failed to grow) but warm enough for Chilean wine palms, Chinese fan palms (which I saw out-and-out street-viewing Swadlincote) and European fan palms (which he successfully grew). I'd recommend European fan palms because they're closest to being native to the area (they are, after all, European, although they're separated from Norway by the North Sea like they are from England by the English Channel), but Chilean wine palms and Chinese windmill palms are also able to deal with temperate summers as long as there's a decent growing season and the winters are mild enough. Sitka can't even support Chinese windmill palms because its growing seasons are too short, but Farsund does have significantly warmer summers and longer growing seasons than that like Swadlincote does. It's true that they won't be native palms (unless you're on the main peninsula of Europe, in South America west of the Andes or in certain mild-summer highland areas of South or East Asia) nor the same type of palms you can grow in even some of the most freeze-prone subtropical regions like my native Tennessee, but there are palms that can deal with temperate summers, one of which is even native to other parts of Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsund

[Palmfarmer]

I have seen Trachies, Sagos and Canary Island date palms in “Plantasjen” If you want something rare ask the local garden centers near you if they could help you to make a custom order. 

[Than]

I remember seeing on TV a garden somewhere near Stavanger, Sør-Hidle in Ryfylke, that successfully grows palms and other tropical-looking plants; the Queen of Norway once celebrated her birthday there. So in some microclimates I guess it is possible! 

If I were you I'd try to create a microclimate as warm as possible and invest on the hardiest palm species out there; perhaps the same ones found in Ryfylke. 

No matter what you do, it will be interesting to see what happens. Palms are an extreme sport where you are!

Perhaps you can ask a Swedish nursery to prepare a photosanitary certificate and then you go and collect the trees?

[L.A.M.]

18 hours ago, L.A.M. said:

Farsund has a very similar climate to Swadlincote, where I had a former love interest that was growing palms. Based on that, it's probably too cold for Canary Island date palms (which he failed to grow) but warm enough for Chilean wine palms, Chinese fan palms (which I saw out-and-out street-viewing Swadlincote) and European fan palms (which he successfully grew). I'd recommend European fan palms because they're closest to being native to the area (they are, after all, European, although they're separated from Norway by the North Sea like they are from England by the English Channel), but Chilean wine palms and Chinese windmill palms are also able to deal with temperate summers as long as there's a decent growing season and the winters are mild enough. Sitka can't even support Chinese windmill palms because its growing seasons are too short, but Farsund does have significantly warmer summers and longer growing seasons than that like Swadlincote does. It's true that they won't be native palms (unless you're on the main peninsula of Europe, in South America west of the Andes or in certain mild-summer highland areas of South or East Asia) nor the same type of palms you can grow in even some of the most freeze-prone subtropical regions like my native Tennessee, but there are palms that can deal with temperate summers, one of which is even native to other parts of Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsund

Oops. I meant Chinese windmill, not Chinese fan. I also meant out-and-about, not out-and-out. I only caught my mistakes too late to edit them into oblivion!  My intended advice still stands, though.

[janAVik]

https://florogfjare.no/no/jungelrestaurant/

Iis this the place you saw? It a smal Island in Stavanger. It awesome what the have managed to achieve ther 💪

[Marco67]

Western Norway is zone 8b/9a, so cold winters aren't really the problem. The limiting factor is lack of summer heat. Trachycarpus would do fine but species like Butia and Jubaea will probably wither away over the years. 

 

Also Western Norway is one of the rainiest part of Europe, which in combination with the overall cool temperatures would exclude species that are vulnerable to rot. 

 

I personally would stick to Trachycarpus, that is by far the best option for you. 

[janAVik]

20 minutes ago, Marco67 said:

Western Norway is zone 8b/9a, so cold winters aren't really the problem. The limiting factor is lack of summer heat. Trachycarpus would do fine but species like Butia and Jubaea will probably wither away over the years. 

 

Also Western Norway is one of the rainiest part of Europe, which in combination with the overall cool temperatures would exclude species that are vulnerable to rot. 

 

I personally would stick to Trachycarpus, that is by far the best option for you. 

I don't live in western Norway, I marked the spot on the map. It's all the down south I Norway 

[Marco67]

Then Trachycarpus is by far the best option for you. It's cold hardy even for long periods of cold and it also doesn't need a lot of heat to grow.

[Than]

9 hours ago, janAVik said:

https://florogfjare.no/no/jungelrestaurant/

Iis this the place you saw? It a smal Island in Stavanger. It awesome what the have managed to achieve ther 💪

Yes! I think I saw an olive tree in one of the photos! I dunno how they do it but they must offer some protection to those plants. 

[Palmfarmer]

19 hours ago, janAVik said:

https://florogfjare.no/no/jungelrestaurant/

Iis this the place you saw? It a smal Island in Stavanger. It awesome what the have managed to achieve ther 💪

Definitely. It was just a bare Island with no trees and a lot of wind and they planted trees all over to make a great microclimate 

[PalmatierMeg]

Forgive my ignorance, but does Chamaerops humilis aka European Fan Palm grow in southern Norway? The great thing about this species is that you can find it in so many cultivars: typical, Vulcano, cerifera, solitary trunked and more varieties I can't even remember. As with Sabal minor in the US you could landscape your yard with them.

[Kim]

Have you tried growing from seed? It's the slowest thing, of course, but rewarding to germinate your own. Growing palms from seed indoors would allow you a greater range of species, though essentially as houseplants. 

[janAVik]

1 hour ago, Kim said:

Have you tried growing from seed? It's the slowest thing, of course, but rewarding to germinate your own. Growing palms from seed indoors would allow you a greater range of species, though essentially as houseplants. 

Yes I have alot off different seeds, but I takes forever 😅 I just sown 100 fortunei

100 wagnerianus  and I have som miscellaneous seeds..

[Than]

17 hours ago, Kim said:

Have you tried growing from seed? It's the slowest thing, of course, but rewarding to germinate your own. Growing palms from seed indoors would allow you a greater range of species, though essentially as houseplants. 

I believe his seedlings will grow very very slowly in Norway; unless kept in a room with 20+ C and grow lights.. but still.

[MSX]

On 5/8/2024 at 11:54 PM, janAVik said:

100 fortunei 100 wagnerianus...

wow what are you going to do with all that forest?!

[janAVik]

14 minutes ago, MSX said:

wow what are you going to do with all that forest?!

99% are problaby going to die 😅😅

[Aceraceae]

Southwest Norway (58 N) is most similar to the far northern Scotish isles of Shetland (60 N) and Orkney (59 N), and as that screenshot above ^^ of climate averages shows, similar to Ketchikan Alaska (55 N) on Alaska's southern coastal peninsula. 

The average annual temp of in all of these places is barely above 8 C (46 F), which leaves only Trachycrapus, the windmill palm, as the only possibility, and even then it's very questionable, with high rain and high wind especially on the isles. (the towns of Lerwick and Kirkwall should try trachycarpus) 

The western Scotish Isles, the outer Hebrides, has a known Trachycarpus windmill palm growing, nearest city is Stornoway (58 N) but even that area is notably warmer at over 9 C (48 F) annual temp, with winters over 5 C (41 F), but summers just as cold or colder than southwestern Norway. Farsund has warmer summers but winters very close to freezing average at 2 C (36 F) in February. An occasional colder winter would have several weeks below freezing, and the windmill palm would need to be covered. A few years ago, scandinavia had a very mild winter, where Copenhagen saw no hard freeze for the entire winter (coldest temp was around 30 F or -1 or -2 C). But recently scandinavia had a colder winter, with some months below freezing. 

[Foxpalms]

On 5/10/2024 at 6:17 PM, Aceraceae said:

The western Scotish Isles, the outer Hebrides, has a known Trachycarpus windmill palm growing, nearest city is Stornoway (58 N) but even that area is notably warmer at over 9 C (48 F) annual temp, with winters over 5 C (41 F), but summers just as cold or colder than southwestern Norway. Farsund has warmer summers but winters very close to freezing average at 2 C (36 F) in February. An occasional colder winter would have several weeks below freezing, and the windmill palm would need to be covered. A few years ago, scandinavia had a very mild winter, where Copenhagen saw no hard freeze for the entire winter (coldest temp was around 30 F or -1 or -2 C). But recently scandinavia had a colder winter, with some months below freezing. 

Those western Scottish islands have very mild winters for their latitude. Just south of where you mentioned in Barra (57N), they commonly have zone 10a winters. I would even argue it's mild enough to try a nikau palm in a protected costal spot there. Castlebay has an average high of 8c and low of 5c during the coldest month of the year. Also a beautiful area with white sand beaches and turquoise water, almost like a more northern version of the Scilly Isles. 

 

[Aceraceae]

Shetland is zone 9, as are parts of coastal Norway, possibly including Farsund (Bergen is 8b). This is one zone above Trachycarpus nominal zone 8 rating. However, Cold zone rating of many palms is 1 to 2 zones higher than hot zone equivalent, such as Washingtonia in New Mexico zone 7 or 8 vs Texas zone 9, or Cocos surviving in 10b or even 10a Florida vs not in california or mediterranean zone 11. 

The Vaeroy archipeligo in northern Norway, well above 66 N in the Arctic Circle, has a thawed oceanic Arctic temperate climate with temps above freezing (32 F/0 C) for all the winter months, and where the record low is way above 0 F or -18 C, yielding a cold zone 8. 

Could we get a repost of pics of the northern and oceanic-most windmill palms, such as the one in the Outer Hebrides? 

[Arecaceus]

I don't know too much about Norwegian climate but observing European weather patterns throughout the year in the mildest regions of Norway you should be able to grow some palms by temp minimums but what you have to consider are temperature fluctuations (late frosts) and cool to cold temperatures for a long time. So my best guess would also be Trachycarpus fortunei as they can handle cool weather very well and they also grow at relatively low tempertures. They even grow during winter time if it is mild enough. I think you should start with T. fortunei as it is the easiest and then just try other cold hardy species. You never know until you tried in your own garden.