Your Guide To Growing Palm Trees

As they tend to remind us of tropical islands and seaside lifestyles, palm trees are a popular staple in many Australian backyards, resorts and even workplaces. 

Palm trees are arguably amongst some of the best known and most extensively cultivated varieties of flora families in the world. While many modern day products and foods are derived from the humble palm tree, their relationship with humans as a resource goes back for hundreds of years. In many historical cultures, palms were often used as symbols for victory, peace, and fertility thanks to their importance as food. 

These days, palm trees are widely used in a variety of landscape settings. With their varied palette of intriguing silhouettes, textures, sizes, heights and colours, palm trees just about have it all. As popular additions to both outdoor gardens and indoor pots alike, they’re also incredibly easy to care for providing that you follow a few key golden rules to keep them happy, such as making sure they have access to the right type of humidity. If you’re thinking about jumping on the palm bandwagon, what types of varieties are considered to be the most popular for Australian green thumbs?

Five Popular Types Of Palm Trees In Australia

Palm trees as we know them are members of the Arecaceae plant family. While there are over 2,600 known species, most of these are restricted to tropical and subtropical climates. However, there are quite a few varieties of palm trees that can be grown in a wide variety of environments in the Land Down Under, with just a handful of the most popular including the following. 

Chinese Windmill Palm – Otherwise known as trachycarpus fortunei, the elegantly shaped Chinese windmill palm is famed for its distinctive silhouette and fan-like fronds. While they’re well suited to growing in the tropics, they can also thrive in cool and temperate climates. Although they can grow to heights of up to seven metres, gardeners can keep these types of palms in a pot or a garden provided that they have access to enough sun. 

Lady Palm – If your garden or verandah is prone to lots of shade, then the visually striking lady palm might be the variety for you. With its dark and glossy green stems, the lady palm grows best in moist but well drained soil, and is a popular go-to for those who prefer a rainforest style look in their homes and gardens. It’s for this reason that the lady palm is one of the best suited varieties to grow indoors as well. 

Golden Cane Palm – Dypsis lutescens – also known as golden cane palm, areca palm, yellow palm, or butterfly palm – is a species of flowering palm originally native to Madagascar. They’ve long been popular as a screening plant, but in recent years have seen a surge in popularity as a houseplant thanks to the bright green and gold stems that this species is known for.  Provided that they’re planted in well drained soil, they can tolerate both full sun and part shade. 

Australian Fan Palm – Although best suited to subtropical and temperate climates, the Australian fan palm is arguably one of our most popular native varieties. While it can grow up to a monstrous fifteen metres in height, this is rare in most domestic and residential settings. The striking fan shaped fronds can make quite the statement in large scale areas, it’s also able to be kept in pots if provided with enough shade to thrive. 

Parlour Palm – The parlour palm is one of the most heavily sold houseplant palms in the world. It is one of several species with leaves that are harvested as xate, or fronds that are commercially used by florists to frame flower arrangements. Popular for it’s dark green statement leaves, the parlour palm is for gardeners who want to make a big impact with a relatively small plant, as this variety only grows up to two metres in height. 

In order to keep your palm trees healthy and requiring little to no maintenance, try to embrace forward thinking and proactive measures instead of reactive ones, especially when it comes to things like watering, weeding, fertilising and tackling pests. As such, one of the most effective means to do so is to ensure that the soil in your garden or pots is at its best. 

Optimise Your Garden Soil The Natural Way 

Do your plants – and yourself – a favour, and give them a head start by optimising your soil prior to planting. By adding a natural plant food like Biotic Booster, this will help your garden to: 

• Provide essential nutrients and microbes 
• Act as a liquid fertiliser to unlock your soil’s potential 
• Drought proof your plants and lower water consumption
• Increase and speed up the germination process
• Assist in protecting your plants from pests and diseases 
• Provide a natural solution that’s safe to use around your herbs, fruit and veggies

If you’re ready to take the leap into improving the health of your plants while minimising the use of chemical based fertilisers, then it may be time to try plant food and plant probiotics. Our Ultimate Garden Health Pack includes our Biotic Booster, FP-60 Probiotic Spray, RE-250 Soil Energiser. In each concentrated bottle, millions of natural bacterias are waiting to find a new home in your garden.

Here at Bioweed, we specialise in environmentally friendly gardening products, including herbicides, plant food and plant probiotics, and natural alternatives to traditional gardening solutions. Should you have any questions about how to improve the sustainability of your garden, get in touch with us today.