The perfect palm tree for your backyard

I like palm trees. They really make a "tropical paradise" in my backyard. My problem, like many other people's, is that I have a small suburban lot. And full-sized palm trees here would just mean that I would be "looking at telephone poles" as I sat in my backyard. Scenic for people from a distance, but no so much for me. So I discovered the perfect palm tree - a miniature, called a dwarf date palm.

You can get them anywhere, at nurseries, at Home Depot, just about anywhere that sells tropical plants, and they're very common, and inexpensive. Of course, they're miniatures, so they'll never grow to be as tall as full-sized palms. And that's the point. The ones I have here I planted over twenty years ago, and they're really looking their best. I paid $1.99 for them at K-Mart in 1995, and they've been growing steadily ever since. They're what you would call "big miniatures" now, kinda like jumbo shrimp. If you don't want to wait twenty years for them to get to this size, you'll have to pay more for a larger plant, but you don't ever have to worry about looking at a "telephone pole".

The wall you see there is about six feet tall, so I can get at them and trim them as needed. It may look as if they're jammed up against the wall in the photo, but there's room for me to get behind them. I like fussing with them, and keeping the trunks neat and trimmed. Right now they're in bloom, which is really when they look their best, so when the flowers fade I'll give them a good trim, but not until then.

So there you go. You can turn your backyard into a tropical paradise without making it look like it's just the bottom of a row of telephone poles, with this type of palm tree. You can go ask for a dwarf date palm, or just show the people at the garden center this photo. They'll know what you mean.