Palm Trees

A palm cannot be talked into a different shape later. One growing point sits at the top of each trunk, and cutting it kills that trunk, so a solitary palm cannot be shortened in five years when it reaches the gutter. You are buying a finished outline. A clumper is the exception: cut the tallest canes out at ground level and let new ones come up. The range suits courtyards, pool surrounds, driveway entries and shaded rooms through Brisbane, Sydney, coastal WA and warm South Australian gardens. It works badly in a frost hollow around Orange or Bathurst, where only the cold end of this list belongs.

Cold sorts the range before anything else does

Frost is the first filter. The Windmill Palm comes from mountain country in China and shrugs off winters that finish the tropical species. The European Fan Palm is next, a Mediterranean clumper built for dry summers and cold nights, at home in Adelaide and behind Perth. The Cabbage Tree Palm is the local answer, native from coastal Queensland down to eastern Victoria, so it takes frost and coastal humidity in the same stride. The European fan palms and the Cabbage Tree Palm carry spines along the leaf stalks, as do the date palms and several Licualas, so keep them back from pool coping, path edges and anywhere children run. Bangalow Palm handles Sydney and sheltered Melbourne gardens, but it is a gully plant that wants real water, and it drops red fruit that stains paving and seeds into gutters and bush, so cut the sprays off green over a path. Coconut Palm is wet tropics material, sulks through a Brisbane winter, and its falling nuts keep it off paths.

Clumping or solitary decides what you actually get

This is where screening plans fall over. A solitary palm gives you a bare trunk and a canopy above head height, which blocks an upstairs window and nothing lower. If the problem is the neighbour at ground level, buy a clumper. Golden Cane Palm is the standard, throwing fresh canes from the base so the mass stays leafy to the soil. Cabada Palm clumps sparsely, with clear space at eye level between the stems, so it is a feature you can walk into rather than a screen. In shade, Lady Palm and Bamboo Palm hold a dark side passage where almost nothing else keeps leaf. One Foxtail Palm at a pool corner reads as one object. It has no spines and sheds its own fronds, which is why it ends up beside coping. Five in a line down a fence neither screen nor make a hedge.

Size, and the two mistakes that cost people the plant

More entries here start at 400mm than at any other size, roughly 35 litres of root and a two person lift. A 300mm is about 15 litres and still a real plant. At the far end a handful run to 750 litres and beyond, so check gate width and overhead wires first.

Plant in the warm months where winters are cold. Palm roots barely move in cold soil, so an autumn planting in Melbourne sits doing nothing until spring and often rots first. Set the root ball at the depth it grew; a buried trunk base kills a healthy palm slowly. Feed with a palm formulation carrying potassium and magnesium. On sand around Perth or the Gold Coast, a potassium short palm shows it in the oldest fronds, orange speckling that spreads until the tips die back. Leave those fronds on. The palm is stripping potassium out of them to build the next leaf, so cutting them off deepens the shortage. Take a frond only once it is fully brown.

Around a palm group, tropical plants covers cordyline, heliconia and frangipani, ferns and tree ferns suit the shaded floor, and the indoor range sits behind kentia and lady palm.