Palms for the Dry Garden

By Jason Dewees, our in-house horticulturist, palm expert, and author of Designing With Palms

The dry garden is a place we cultivate for harvest, beauty, and life outdoors without overdoing the water in our summer-dry coastal California climate. But a dry garden can take many different forms. We might gather the gorgeous curiosities of desert plants like cactus and succulents, or we might create a meadowy low-water space lit with seasonal flowers. Palms, with all their beauty and versatility, can play an important role in many types of dry gardens, helping to create a distinct sense of place.

*Brahea armata* (Mexican blue palm, right)

When we design dry gardens, we’re often aiming to conjure a relaxing desert vibe. But what’s a desert without a lush oasis? And what leads travelers to an oasis? Palm trees—tall and green amid the shades of ochre and sand, olive and gray. In the land of little rain, palms conjure ease, shade, and fruitfulness to be discovered in a cultivated place. In the oasis that is a garden, the cool rustling and swaying of palm fronds can relax us like nothing else.

*Butia odorata* (jelly palm or pindo palm)

As design elements, palms in the dry garden can offer green canopy without stealing light, create vertical drama in minimal space, and introduce pleasing movement and sound. Their rosette-shaped crowns comprise complex yet geometrically regular leaves—radial, corrugated fans or arching feathers—and add an important layer to the simpler rosettes of agaves, echeverias, and other common succulents, as well as the trunked simple rosettes of aloes, furcraeas, and yuccas. Then, having drawn your eye upward to the tree level, palm trees mediate the complexity of woody trees, with their characterful, idiosyncratic branching patterns, foliage, and silhouettes.

*Chamaerops humilis* (Mediterranean fan palm)

Palms We Love for Dry Gardens

Dry-growing plants from other mediterranean climates are some of the most exciting and useful choices for our gardening palette here in coastal California. On the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, shrubby native fan palms, Chamaerops humilis, grow nested among wild olives, lavender, rosemary, thyme. In central Chile, the climatic mirror of California, massive Jubaea palms cast their crop of mini coconuts over foothill scrub, spring wildflowers, cactus, and succulent bromeliads. On the sunny, misty Canary Islands, Canary Island date palms filter sunlight over succulents and flowering plants familiar from our gardens.

*Brahea edulis* (Guadalupe palm) at Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco

But what if you’re interested in building a dry garden with native plants? Are there palm choices for you? In California’s low deserts, we do have a native fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, which provides natural shade and abundant birdsong in canyons and springs—but this palm languishes when we try to plant it close to the coast, making it difficult for gardens in the more coastal parts of the Bay Area and LA. Happily, though, we can grow a different palm that can also be called “native” in an even truer sense: the Guadalupe palm, Brahea edulis, from Baja California in Mexico.

Baja is part of what’s called the California Floristic Province, the region characterized by our distinctive summer-dry climate and a wildly diverse array of native plant species. Ceanothus, manzanitas, buckwheats, and dudleyas are examples of celebrated plant diversity in this native-California botanical region where we’re lucky to garden. The region extends from southwest Oregon south through the state of California (west of the deserts) into northwestern Baja California.

Anchoring the southwest corner of the province is Baja’s remote Guadalupe Island, where the hardy Guadalupe palm grows. It thrives on fog-drip from native Monterey pines and Island oaks and in dry streambeds alike, tolerating ocean winds and one of the shortest and most erratic winter rainy seasons on the West Coast. It may be the palm species most bound to mediterranean-climate conditions, because it’s intolerant of the wet, warm summers found in other palm-growing areas of the country. The list of its native island plant neighbors that are also native to coastal California (or at least closely related to mainland native plants) is long, and it includes, wouldn’t you know, species of ceanothus, manzanitas, buckwheats, and dudleyas. The Guadalupe’s cultural tolerances and ecological origins make it an ideal palm for a native-centered garden.

*Brahea edulis.* grown by us, at McCoppin Square Park in San Francisco

*Brahea edulis* production crop on our farms

Here are our top choices for palms for the dry garden, with a bit of helpful info about each, and links to pages of detailed growing info about each plant:

Brahea edulis (Guadalupe palm): fan palm; modest height tree; generous spread; sun or shade; inland or seaside; wind-tolerant.
Brahea armata (Mexican blue palm): fan palm; similar size to the Guadalupe; slow-growing; best in sun; prefers warmer inland areas to the coast; wind-tolerant.
Butia odorata (jelly palm or pindo palm): feather palm; similar size and tolerances as the Guadalupe, a bit thirstier in summer; tasty fruit; wind-tolerant.
Chamaerops humilis (mediterranean fan palm): fan palm; native to the western Mediterranean; grows with familiar Mediterranean plants like olives and rosemary in habitat; a shrub in habitat; endlessly versatile in cultivation; very wind-tolerant.
Trachycarpus wagnerianus (“Waggie,” or windmill palm): fan palm; thin trunk; quicker vertical growth; narrow crown; shade or sun; appreciates a monthly watering in summer but will tolerate no water once established in heavier soils; wind-tolerant.
Trachycarpus takil (windmill palm): similar to above, but bigger, faster-growing; wind-tolerant.
Cycas revoluta (sago): not in fact a palm, this is a cycad, a group of plants that look like palms but more often tolerate drought; needs sun unless summers are hot; some summer water appreciated; wind-tolerant.
Jubaea chilensis (Chilean wine palm): feather palm; the Rolls-Royce of palms for California, a grand statement rivaling any other palm for size and stateliness; very drought tolerant and cold tolerant; wind-tolerant.
Parajubaea: fast-growing; surprisingly drought-tolerant; worth seeking out; not as wind-tolerant.

How to Choose and Grow Palms for the Dry Garden

For a dry garden design, old-hardiness is one of the most important things to consider when it comes to selecting palms to grow, and even cool-tolerance is an important factor, especially in the foggy, chilly-summer climate of SF. No matter where exactly you are in coastal California, we’ve got you covered with the list above, which includes offerings that work in most places near the Bay and ocean. Wind is another factor to take into account, so we’ve noted above which palms are less likely to tolerate windy spots.

It’s also important to consider water needs. Plants adapted to our natural rainfall cycles will tend to thrive; the coastal California climate is summer-dry, which means that every year we go without soaking rain for at least six months, from April to October. So we must either select plants adapted to seasonal drought, or choose to irrigate our choices indefinitely. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to irrigate and plenty of ways to do so wisely, even in a dry garden; in fact, it’s crucial to water even drought-tolerant plants to get them established, and sometimes just to keep them looking good through years when winter rainfall just isn’t enough. But the palms we’ve selected as dry garden choices will all tolerate our summer-dry conditions and long droughts. (In SF, of course, we’re lucky because summer drought stress is less than in warmer areas. Cool, humid days mean plants don’t use as much water. This expands the list of palms that will tolerate or thrive with minimal irrigation.)

*Chamaerops humilis* at Flora Grubb Gardens, our retail nursery in San Francisco

Palms as a family prefer moisture, but the species on our list above are among the exceptions. They will need water to get established over the first two to five years, but can in most places be left without irrigation once they are mature. They may grow more slowly in the dry garden, but they’ll stay looking pretty good. And you can always give them a dousing halfway through the summer to help them along. Some of these palms are intolerant of too much moisture, especially in the center of the crown, so be careful about how your irrigation hits them.

We often have many of these palms available in large specimen sizes or smaller sizes for your designs and displays. Check out our full availability list for a complete picture of all the palms available with sizes and quantities. And please contact our team at hello@grubbandnadler.com for expert advice about growing these palms in dry gardens and otherwise!

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Susie NadlerOctober 12, 2023