Growing Palms in the UK

For the UK there are essentially two styles of palm... those with broad fan shaped leaves and those with long feather-like leaves. Although some palms from warmer climates will grow in the UK they will grow an awful lot slower, some requiring a good soaking of heat to kick them into action. This needs to be borne in mind when selecting and positioning palms. Palms from temperate climates will grow much faster. Palms also have a predictable growth pattern – straight up. They don’t wander around like shrubs and trees. This makes them very easy to manage.

A lot of palms are graded for cold hardiness. This is very misleading because there are different types of cold and also palms which are grown abroad and imported by superstores will have a much lower tolerance to cold.
A sudden onset of a nasty minus figure which thaws out the next day is far less damaging that a long lingering freeze which is just below or above zero, that is why places like Florida can grow a greater variety of palms than the UK, essentially because it has good warm days to compensate for harsh freezes. This helps palms recover from stress. In the UK Winters are wet with very little light and no warmth. Palms do not like these conditions so can suffer damage quite easily, especially if young. Rain followed by a harsh freeze can be very damaging as the water freezes near the core of the palm and can induce rot killing the spear.

I find the worse time for palms is March and early April. Warming UK day and night time temperatures can start to kid palms into sucking up water again. Then they are hit with just a mild frost of say -4c and then 'bang' their saturated cells burst and leaves blacken off and the plant may even die. If your plants reach the third week of April then you can rest for another season :)

A palm should be planted out in the Spring. Care should be taken regarding position. Remember these are trees and will expand their trunks to quite imposing proportions as they grow. A lot of plams do not like to be dug up again and the stress of this may kill them. If you must dig one up do it in Autumn or very very early Spring (like most trees or shrubs) and strip of a lot of the foliage so it does not dehydrate moisture through the leaves.

Some palms can completely defoliate during Winter. However if a good hot Summer follows they will usually recover. If no hot Summer (which is usually the case in the UK) then they will probably die off.

Best Palms for North West UK

These are the following palms which I guarantee you will have absolutely no trouble with in the North West of England. The NW gets a good deal of Winter frost, as low as -12c I have seen, but it seems to generally get no lower than -8c. I shall also explain why some of the 'popular' varieties sold at garden centres are maybe not so good.

No Protection Needed

• Trachycarpus Fortunei - Indestructable and fast growing fan palm. No protection needed.
• Trachycarpus Takil - Larger leaved version of T. Fortunei. Hard to come by !
• Trachycarpus Wagnerianus - Stiff leaved version of T. Fortunei. Good for windy gardens.
• Butia Capitata - Excellent and architectural feather palm. Slight blue tinge to most.
• Butia Eriospatha - Awesome greener and lighter leaved variety of Butia which continues to grow even in the Winter !!!
• Jubaea Chilensis - Excellent feather leaf palm which is slow growing and incredibly expensive.
• Chamaerops Humilis - Slow growing fan palm which suckers at the base and forms a bush. Very spikey though.
• Chamaerops Humilis var. Cerifera - Bluer version with narrower fingers or leaflets.

Some Protection Needed

• Brahea Edulis - Beautiful green fan palm which is hard to get, but seems to be a great contender if not wet in Winter when a baby, so try and get a mature one (-8c will kill it if unprotected).
• Brahea Armata - Expensive blue fan palm which gets some yellow spotting in Winter if left unprotected (-8c damages if unprotected).
• Phoenix Dactylifera - Surprising toughness unprotected (-6c will damage if unprotected), but will brown and yellow a bit in harsh frosts.

Forget these

• Bismarkia Nobilis - This will die I guarantee it at -1c !!!
• Livistona Chinenses - This will die anything below -4c even if fleeced.
• Pheonix Roebelenii - This will damage badly at -2c and die at -4c.
• Washingtonia Robusta - This will die at -4c and will need a really hot summer if it is to return.
• Washingtonia Filifera - This will die at -6c and will need a really hot summer if it is to return.
• Butia Odorata - This close relative of B. Capitata will die at -4c if this occurs for more than one night in sequence with near freezing daytime temperatures.
• Butia Yatay - This will die at -4c if you get a sequence of these with low temp days in between.
• Phoenix Caneriensis - Very popular palm which will damage very easily at -4c if it is not in a sheltered area. It will die at -6c unless the following days and nights are above freezing. It is most vulnerable to Spring frosts. It may come back if the following Summer is hot.

All the above finding have come from my own experiences with these guys so please beware of the false claims of garden centres... all they want to do is cash in on a craze and have no regard for the plants welfare.

Things about Rhapis Humilis

Some things which you may be interested in about this rare plant which I have discovered through experimentation would suggest that it isn't as easy to care for as the general consensus stipulates.

It does not like tap water. It does not like rainwater (NW England rain anyhow). These turn the leaves brown very quickly. It took me a while to figure this out, but the only water it does like is bottled water, especially French - Evian or Volvic :D

It does not like the wind. Wind destroys the new leaves while they are still soft. These new leaves then go brown and look very tatty.

It does not like direct sunlight, whether it is outside or behind a window. The outer leaves scorch very easily!

It does not like to be in too big a pot. Despite being a clumping palm it would seem that if you put it in too big a pot it will go on strike and stop growing.

It's main growth is in the early spring. New shoots pop up and existing shoots will put out 2 or 3 leaves. Throughout the Summer it's growth will be slow. This would suggest temperate preference.

I have found it a tough battle to care for this palm and if i had the chance to buy it again i would probably pass.

Beware B&Q

OK, we all know that as exotic gardening becomes more popular the superstores like B&Q are going to want to cash in on it. Last year I noticed them selling Phoenix Roebelenii as an outdoor palm. They have been doing this for some years now. While these guys can sustain some frost they really do not like it at all. Fleece will help out a little, but take things below -4c and you will have some real trouble. Although they look nice with their light feathery fronds you are well advised to avoid them unless you keep them in a pot and bring them undercover for the Winter.

Now, what's even worse is last year I noticed, to my horror, that B&Q were trying to pass of the very tender Bismarckia Nobilis as a hardy palm !?!?!?!! They were the silver forms (which are the toughest), but they will defoliate at 0c easily !!!! DON'T BE CONNED !!! B&Q were selling these at a HUGE 50 quid each too !!!! It was a complete laugh reading the pointless info cards they stick to their plants... "Needs protection from heavy frosts"... more like needs protection period!

Growing Patterns of Palms in the Winter

This Winter has pretty much passed by now. I monitored the growing behaviour of my palms during the Winter. I noted a low of -6c and about a dozen nights of -4 or below. Not bad really! However out of the various palms I have I can only say that there were 3 which continued to push out new leaves.

Nope, it wasn't the Trachys, not the Butias... it was the two Brahea (Armata and Edulis) and the New Zealand palms Rhopalostylis Sapida. I kind of expected R. Sapida to grow as they originate from temperate rain forest areas. I was surprised by the Brahea continuing to grow however!!!

Brahea are dry climate palms, used to hot dry conditions. NW Winters are very wet and very cool. The Armata pushed out 2 new leaves during Winter and the Edulis gave me 4 !!! It would therefore seem that these guys don't go dormant like most palms. The more I see the what the Brahea can do the more I like them. Waaaaay better than Butia and Trachys it would seem !!!!

Washingtonia Filifera – Doesn’t like getting wet !!!

It seems that suppliers of the palm don’t seem to care whether they give you a Filifera, Robusta or a mongrel of the two. It can be very confusing as at first sight they look almost identical to each other. However, from my own experiences with these palms they are very temperamental to the British weather conditions. Filifera can quite happily shrug off -7c so long as it doesn’t get wet. If you have rain followed by a measly -5c then it will defoliate... old leaves, new leaves, the lot will wilt, go brown and hang there looking very sorry for itself.

The year before I kept one inside the house for the Winter. Despite being ‘dry’ atmosphere lovers it decided to shrivel all of its leaves up into brown paper. I was really surprised by this behaviour?

This is a real pity as I think this is one of the more attractive fan palms with its dark orange trunk and light green leaves. On a good note though, it will return when the weather warms up. It will initially push out a mass of small leaves and then give you one or two big ones again. It can take it 2 years to start growing proper size leaves again.

This palm is a fast grower in the UK, as fast as the Trachycarpus family. However, I would not recommend it for the NW of England as we always get wash-out Winters which means this palm will not really thrive and seeing as bringing them indoors or leaving them outdoors during the Winter defoliates them unless you are a fan of totem poles I would not bother..

Jubaea Chilensis

Another example of a totally hardy palm comes in the form of Jubaea Chilensis. These guys are sooooo expensive, why? because they grow so slowly in the UK. It fires 3, 4 even 5 new shoots at a time, but the time for any one of those shoots to form a leaf is pretty much a whole year.

If you are patient though it really is an awesome palm to have. It is also worth the expense of getting a chunkier one if you can.

The reason to buy one... this palm does not care how cold it gets... it keeps growing!!! even through the whole of the Winter it will slowly unfold the new shoots into the beginnings of a new set of leaves. Secondly it does not mind wet Winters. Thirdly, because it grows so slowly you can pretty much predict its growing pattern, so it isn't one of those palms that swamp the house or garden in 10 years or so. Finally it is wind resistant. It has very stuff leaves which no amount of wind will budge.

So, in summary they tick all the boxes of the UK climate with the only negative being the price.

Butia Yatay - Butia King !!!

The Butias are becoming more and more widespread in the UK now. They all look fairly similar and indeed some outlets sell one specie as another.

Butia Yatay is well known in the US, but not so much here. In the UK Butia Capitata is more usual. The two look very similar when young. However as they get larger the differences start to emerge.

Yatay has more blue in it's leaves. Yatay has much longer leaves and Yatay grows a slimmer trunk. Yatay is as cold hardy as Capitata (-10 unprotected easily). Yatay however is incredibly heavy. A 1 foot pseudo-trunk specimen will have you in a sweat when carrying it. Their trunks must be really dense to make them this heavy (some other Butias are really heavy too).

I have seen some Yatays with clipped leaves... clipped to half their length in an attempt to make them look interesting??? I guess it is just another of those bizarre pruning exercises which serve nothing other than to stress the plant.

Water all Butias well in Summer and make sure they get good sun or else they will push out shrunken leaves making them look very weird indeed. No fleece protection is necessary in Winter unless you go below -10c every night :)

Brahea Edulis

A little looked at fan palm which is really beautiful when young. Pure shiny green in colour and although ‘officially’ is supposed to be damaged at -5 in a dry Winter I have found this not to be the case. It is also said not to like humidity... again I have not found this to be true either.

Mine spent all last Summer in a cool, damp, shaded area of the garden, primarily due to the fact that i had nowhere else to store it. To my amazement it didn't seem to care? It pushed out 4 leaves that Summer (2007, which was a really naff Summer in the NW by the way). I then moved it to the patio this Winter and it has endured a constant beating of rain and temperatures down to -5 while being drenched with water (both soil and foliage). It has even pushed two more leaves out during this Winter !!!!

I am amazed at this palm’s perseverance contrary to common perceptions and hope, should we get worse negative temperatures, it will muscle through them too. I’ll keep you posted!!!

Rhapis Humilis - Indoor or Out?

Apparently this is extinct in it's native China with only males ones remaining in cultivated existence. So, beware of so called 'seed sellers'... without a female there will be no seeds!!!

This palm really hates the sun - when young at least it would seem. I had a real battle with my 3 foot high one last Summer. The Summer heat didn't get any higher than 26 degrees C either. I was moving it all over the garden and it didn't seem happy anywhere. Just about all of the top leaves died off due to sun-scorch. I was so upset as this palm is pretty hard to get hold of.

I am keeping it indoors now, but again it doesn't seem too happy there either. There is new growth, but I think it is still in shock from the previous Summer.

Well, in any case, this palm is a really good candidate if you have a lot of shaded room which isn't too damp. It doesn't like to dry out, but doesn't like to be wet either. It gradually clumps with new shoots popping up close to the parent clumps (unlike a lot of bamboos). It is VERY slow growing however... dunno if this is due to the climate? So if you can find one try and get a good size.

Rhopalostylis Sapida - A Palm that Prefers Cool.

This rather attractive palm from New Zealand is pretty much unheard of in the UK. Like most plants from this part of the world they are somewhat tricky to grow. I have discovered the following about them through experimentation throughout the last Summer and Winter.

They will only push out new leaves if the temperature isn’t too hot, why I have no idea? In fact the cooler it is the faster they seem to grow. During the Winter my 2 small examples of this palm continued to grow a new leaf (yeh they are THAT slow growing)... this was in very wet temperatures of -2. I am too scared to leave them out anything below that this year as they are so hard to come by.

When small - at least - they do not like the sun, they prefer cool, damp shade... just like ferns. If you put them in the sun then they get very upset and refuse to grow. Also, keeping them in the house is awkward as the dryness of indoors will cause them to quickly go brown and shrivel up. If you must keep them indoors you will need to mist them every day. Your best option is to keep them outside until the temperatures get too low and keep toggling them in and out as temperatures rise and fall.

Unlike other baby palms Winter rain and damp does not seem to bother them at all. My two have been very wet in their plastic pots for the whole Autumn and Winter seasons which is great news for the UK climate.

Well, if you manage to get hold of one of these guys I would recommend you plant it in a sheltered part of your garden with ferns and other moisture lovers. East facing rather than South and in an area where it doesn’t get too frozen. I have not experimented with heavy freeze conditions yet, but will do once they get too big to bring indoors - probably 10 years or so away :D

Phoenix Canariensis - Is it a Good Choice?

This palm is found in every DIY store and garden centre in the UK. Very popular seller, but there are things you should be aware of when considering these guys.

First off they need full sun and high heat and lots of it... something we very rarely get in the NW UK. For this reason they will sit dormant all year and just push out new leaves in the very late Summer which doesn’t really give them much growing time at all before the Autumn sends them dormant again. So, in the NW UK they will grow pretty slowly.

I have found that they do not like to be dug up once planted. They will go brown and defoliate when dug up and may never recover. If you MUST dig it up make sure it is done in Winter and chop off all leaves but the newest lot to stop it dehydrating.

Mine has survived -10 2 years ago without damage, however I have discovered that they hate early Spring freezes. This is when they start to suck up water again and if you get a wet freeze... even -4... it may go brown and appear to die off. However, like many palms, although they appear dead they will push out new leaves again if you get a hot following Summer, so don’t be too keen to throw them onto the compost pile should they go completely brown.

Thirdly these guys will eventually grow really huge... and I mean HUGE. You really don’t want to be putting them near your house. They form a really massive trunk diameter and a thick canopy of leaves. Many people prune them back so they don’t impose too much, which is OK in hot climates, but not really a good idea in cooler climates as the palm will struggle if pruned too hard. By pruning I mean chopping off all leaves which fall under an ideal 45 degree angle from the top of the plant. It looks nice but imagine how effective your hands would be if you had all but your middle two fingers pruned :D

Finally, these palms posses really evil long needle-like thorns which point in all directions. As the plant becomes bigger these thorns can inflict really nasty wounds. If you have kids either educate them or just don’t buy this plant.

I would recommend you keep it in a pot until it becomes unmanageable, then plant it out. Their leaves shoot to 12 feet or more before they start growing a proper trunk.