Palms at Sunnyside Nurseries in Tsawwassen are cheap. I suggest that you find one with a foot of trunk if you are going to the lower mainland. I found their palms cheaper than other locations. The nursery at Elk Lake or Marigold Nursery have the better prices around Victoria. Happy Palms Nursery sells small specimens for $8. It's been a while since I saw the range of colour in your garden. I'd like to take a look at it this summer. Mine is still under construction but it has interesting trees such as a Lantern tree, Desfontainea spinosa (sold by Don the Brugman in Saanich), variegated Fatsia and an evergreen tree from New Zealand that flowers white. The Desfontainea has leaves like a holly tree with orangy trumpet flowers that can appear at anytime. I use it for post-summer colour. I potted a Vanderwolf pine that had been planted by previous owners. It's just too big and too fast for my garden. I'm getting rid of bananas next spring and you're welcome to take some canes. They remain in the garden as I expect bananas on two canes. Palms, bamboo and yuccas will replace them next April. I find that palms & yuccas produce less garden waste and I don't need to rake leaves like owners of oaks & maples. Image link of Banana Joe with a Brahea armata on Salt Spring. Cheers Here is a link that might be useful: Brahea armata on Salt Spring Island, BC

I don't know about all palms, but I had three pygmy dates (Phoenix roebelinii) planted on the north side of my house. I had put them in last March or April and had to move them come September when I realized they would be deep in shadow and open to the cold NW winds. So about 5-6 months in-ground. When it came time to move them I dug a hole about twice the diameter of the plant, so if from center of the palm to the end of the fronds was 8 inches, I dug at 16 inches. After 'slicing' the shovel deep around the entire circumference of the palm, I went back around and this time I gently levered upward as I went. As I did this, a few times I felt a 'pop' in the handle of the shovel and figured this was roots snapping and it made me cringe a bit. But once I got the entire root ball up out of the soil, the tap roots were there, dangling from the bottom. So I guess the popping was the ground releasing the roots. I probably could have then transfered the entire root ball to the new location for the palms, but instead I sat each palm (which was actually a cluster of three palms, so nine palms total) in their own 5 gallon bucket with rainwater to loosen the soil and clean the roots. They sat like this for about a day. I then pulled them from the buckets and removed as much of the soil as possible from the roots, effectively bare-rooting them, though I expect a professional would say there was way too much soil left on the roots to be truly bare-rooted. I pretty much used a bag of MG Palm, Cactus and Citrus soil per clump of palms in their new locations and watered well with rainwater of the next couple of months. As of today, all three clumps of palms are looking good, though a little frost-nipped.

They will get mature heads of from 4' to 10'. Pick an average of around 8' in diameter. If you want them to touch, plant them 8' apart. Closer than that and you have fronds banging into each other. If you want them for shade value, then put them closer. I would price out fully-booted ones just out of curiosity. They do look better than the clear trunks unless you plan on growing stuff on the trunks. I did a job in Ft. Lauderdale where we tied staghorn ferns all around the clear trunks of five existing Sabals on the property. That was 7 or 8 years ago. I would imagine by now they have fully wrapped themselves and expanded.

That sounds pretty ideal. Those have a pretty high germination rate, so you'll be able to easily transplant the seedlings into larger pots. Germinating them in the ground might be tough because just about every other plant in the world grows faster than a Sabal seedling, and you'd constantly be pulling weeds up from around them.