Parlour Palms and Fire Damage on Plants

PLANT OF THE WEEK

Chamaedorea elegans: Parlour palm

Do you love or hate palm trees?
The gardening community is divided into two groups, those that love the palm trees and those that hate them.
Probably because people persist in growing the environment weed, the cocos palm, which although grows really fast, is particularly ugly.

Chamaedorea elegans: Parlour palm

There are many more well behaved palms and more lovely palms out there.

So let’s find out.

I'm talking with the plant panel were Jeremy Critchley of www.thegreengallery.com.au and Karen Smith, editor of www.hortjournal.com.au

 Chamaedorea elegans is in the class of smaller palm trees, that is also one of the most palms sold around the world.

Parlour palm makes a fabulous indoor specimen because of its leaf fronds that emanate as a cluster from the base. It's also known to purify the air indoors (NASA list of top 50 plants) as well as tolerate low light levels.
You can keep the parlour palm indoors for many years, but planted out in the garden under other leafy palms or larger leaved shrubs, it grows as a bushy alternative to the single trunks of most other palms.
Plus, you don’t have dropping palm fronds like you do with cocos palms and a few others.

DESIGN ELEMENTS

Assessing Fire Damaged Gardens Part 1

This series is about the task of assessing and rebuilding a garden after a fire event.
How to tell if the plant is viable, what to do with soil that’s been burnt and has a layer of ash, and what to think about when choosing plants to replant those that didn’t recover.
So let’s start off with assessing what plants remain.
I'm talking withWayne van Balen, immediate past president of the Institute of Horticulture.

The recent bushfires in Australia has seen how fire can damage and even kill trees in your backyard. The extent of the damage depends on how hot and how long the fire burned. 

Many fires were out-of-control fire damaging trees in your garden in various ways. 

Some trees were completely or partially consumed, which leads to drying out or just plain scorching.

Some trees were simply just singed.

Many trees damaged by fire can recover, given your help.

This is particularly true of Australian native trees that have adaptations to recover from fire, when they were injured.

 But the first thing to do, even before you start helping fire damaged trees, is to determine the ones that need to be removed.

• The big tip is to not rush out to cut everything down that looks scorched and burnt.

Plants, native or not, can regenerate but it may take some time.