Capability Green and the Smaller Garden Palms · Kalkan Turkey

Capability Green and the Smaller Garden Palms · Kalkan Turkey · Kalkan Weather · Kalkan Information · K
Monday, 23 May 2016 - Last Updated Sunday, 22 May 2016
We recently announced a brand new regular gardening feature on KTLN.
Capability Green is the resident KTLN gardening guru and will be writing regular features
(roughly every two weeks). His first report was: Capability Green and the Curse of the Red Palm Weevil . Here is his
next article - Smaller Garden Palms - report by Capability Green
I have long been obsessed with growing palm trees and other exotica. My old roof terrace in
England was a tropical jungle full of unusual and only semi-hardy plants. I used to successfully
grow satsumas outside!
Can't eat it? Why grow it?
When I came to Turkey I had no desire to create an English cottage garden; I wanted to grow all
the exotic things I had struggled to grow back home. The biggest disappointment was that
there was a bigger range of palm trees available in the UK from specialist nurseries than I could
find anywhere in Turkey. As a Turkish friend once said "If you can't eat it, why grow it?"
Whilst I would have loved to have a palm-lined driveway to a small villa with a huge garden I
settled for a bigger villa than I needed with a smaller garden than I would have liked. In
retrospect I do now wonder how I would have coped with a much bigger garden!
Typical of developers the world over my villa came with an array of cheap, fast growing plants to
give quick effect. Re-planting started before I technically owned the property having removed
all the existing plants, apart from a couple of bougainvilleas. The only palm tree was a young
Washingtonia planted in a completely inappropriate place that would eventually grow too huge
and just had to come out!
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Capability Green and the Smaller Garden Palms · Kalkan Turkey · Kalkan Weather · Kalkan Information · Ka
Monday, 23 May 2016 - Last Updated Sunday, 22 May 2016
The Pygmy Date Palm (Phoenix Roebelenii) originally from southeastern Asia, was the first of
many palms I planted in my new garden. In Britain they are grown as a conservatory or atrium
palm. They look wonderful because they look just like a proper feather-leafed Date Palm in
miniature. I hadn't seen any growing outside in Turkey and did wonder how they would take the
full blast of Turkey's August sun. I invested in four small ones which were planted in full sun
and now they have grown they look great.
In retrospect I should have bought bigger ones, but I wasn't convinced they would survive, until
sometime later I spotted a group of them growing in a very sunny roundabout in Antalya.
Phoenix Roebelenii are brilliant for the smaller garden but they do take a while to settle in and
mustn't dry out.
Below: Two tall but slim Phoenix Roebelenii growing in Antalya.
The European Fan (leafed) Palm (Chamaerops Humilis) is one of only two palms native to
Europe. It comes in a variety of forms including a version with bluer leaves (Chamaerops
Humilis Cerifera) and my favourite, only recently available in Turkey, Chamaerops Humilis
Vulcano which has a more dense crown of fronds. These are all bushier fan-leafed palms that
are usually multi-stemmed. They eventually get big but not enormous and they are as tough as
boot leather. They originate from southern Europe and up the Atlas Mountains in Morocco
where they have to endure scorching sun in the summer as well as freezing winter nights. If it
has only one stem it is probably not a Chamaerops and if it has no thorns on the leaf stems it
definitely isn’t!
Below: A really old, multi-stemmed and about as big as they come Chamaerops Humilis in
Izmir.
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Capability Green and the Smaller Garden Palms · Kalkan Turkey · Kalkan Weather · Kalkan Information · K
Monday, 23 May 2016 - Last Updated Sunday, 22 May 2016
The
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anot
Kalkan
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Contact
Capability
Green
bystreets
emailing
him
at
CapabilityGreenKalkan@yahoo.com
Kalkan Turkish Local News - your window on Kalkan Turkey.
Independent. Comprehensive. Reliable.
Capability Green
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Capability Green and the Smaller Garden Palms · Kalkan Turkey · Kalkan Weather · Kalkan Information · Ka
Monday, 23 May 2016 - Last Updated Sunday, 22 May 2016
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