Pics of the rest of my front yard for context

yaardvark, i am so happy you chimed in! i really value your input on these boards. the bed pictured IS where it will be located.. possibly a little closer when we fine tune it to the survey. i had the same concerns about putting a separate bed so close. any ideas for making it into one bed ?

The goal of this design is to clearly mark my property boundary and to shield my front and side yards from that bench area so i believe i do need a hedge on the other side of the palms. what would you recommend?

also, do you have a preference for the christmas palms or bottle palms? or something else, like a sylvester palm?

Palm selection is probably down to a matter of taste. Bottle palms are most attractive when young, IMO. As they grow, they have the fat belly and small crown which begins to look less proportionately attractive, in my eyes. Christmas palms are small and everywhere. If you need the palms to stay small, they may be an okay choice (but a little on the boring side). Perhaps a Triangle Palm which has a broader crown? Or a Dypsis onilahensis 'weeping form,' a clustering palm with powdery white crownshafts above green trunks and delicate relaxed leaflets? Or the huge rounded leaves of a Licuala peltata var. sumawongii? Now that would block some views. I can post photos if you have any interest. For a hedge, why not Rhapis excelsa?

You are basically using the palms as "bouquets." But just like as a centerpiece for the table, one larger bouquet is going to look better than two skimpy bouquets side by side. 2 x 2 does not make sense to me. 1 x 4 is much better. It could be 1 x 3 or 1 x 5. As soon as it gets big enough the trunk count is not going to be all that critical so long as it is at least 3. I don't get the hedge on one side of the island and lots of little things on the other. I'd rather see a mound of one thing. But I'm fine with the accent of the agave. I'd made it a cluster of 3 though. Bigger, bolder, simpler.

Since there is already an island next to it, I'd expand that one so it is one island. They are too close to be separate. Avoid the wavy edge lines.

kiminpl: i agree with you on the Christmas palms being boring. It would not be my first choice or even my third. i am fond of sylvester palms but what i need to take into consideration are the other palms in my front yard where this will be located. I have bottles, christmas, i think a fishtail and something else. There has to be some continuity so it all looks like it's part of the same house and i think when species are repeated it looks nice/symetrical like it all flows. i like the triangle palms but that may be a bit too big for the area. it is going to be near two mahoganies (in the HOA side) that were recently trimmed but do get large. i looked up your suggestion of a Dypsis onilahensis. It is nice but not sure i can fully embrace the weeping form. The Licuala peltata var. sumawongii is beautiful! i love the exotic look of it. do you have photos of it in your yard? i think the hedge material suggested is too big for the area.

Yaardvark: i had to read your suggestions a few times before i got the gist of it. to clarify, when you say 1x4, 1x5, 1x3 you mean ONE tree like a christmas palm with four, five or three limbs each?

YAardvark: The hedge on one side is to block the view of the ppl on the other side (by the bench) from looking into my yard. instead of one continuous hedge i wanted a mixed bed but with some hedging so i could play with the height of it until it gave me the privacy i was looking for. when you say you would have made the accent of the false agaves as a cluster of 3 what do you mean? three on the front of the bed instead of one? or get rid of the palms and use the agave in its place?

No, not get rid of palms. At one end of bed is palm cluster. At other end of bed is agave cluster. These create balance for each others mass. I say "clusters" because only one of a plant in the landscape (one agave or one palm) usually looks skimpy or weak. Avoid too much variety and small amounts of things. Better to have less variety and larger things (or amounts of things conjoined in a cluster.)

Why is there a need to "play with the height"? Pick a proper height (a goal ... not a installed height) to begin with be done with it. Many shrubs can be trimmed at varying heights if one picks the proper plant for that range. Or ... use a groundcover type plant that automatically terminates at the proper height so there is no top trimming. Those are the choices.

Don't know what height will give proper privacy? Place a stick at each end of the proposed bed area and connect them with a ribbon or flagging tape. Set the ribbon at various heights and observe each from a distance and location where it will matter to you. Keep changing the height until you're satisfied that it's the height that will give you the privacy you're looking for. At each stick measure the distance from ground to where the ribbon is attached. If the bed surface soil will be mounded at all, take that into account in your calculations.

Licuala peltata var. sumawongii photos for arodinmiami. These are shots from my garden. The palms are in a group of 3 on a mound about 10 ft. beyond my front door which is on a raised foundation with a lanai. They prefer calm air, so if you get regular strong winds (a moderate breeze is okay) the leaves will tatter, and you won't be happy with them. You can see some leaf damage in the second photo from a heavy duty tropical storm, but that is a rare event in my garden.

These palms are about 5 years old in the photos, planted from 3-gal pots and are about 5 to 6 ft. tall. They don't gain height really fast, which is great in the long run, but means you should buy fairly good-size palms to provide immediate screening, say around 4 ft. tall. At that size they won't really have a trunk yet, just stems and really big leaves. Eventually they will begin to look more like a palm with a trunk (takes years) but they mix well with lower growing ornamentals. I like the pinks and reds of ti plants for the contrast; your ixora might be a good companion. They would not mix so well with the bird of paradise -- conflicting shape/form. The last photo shows some very mature specimens (est. 20+ years old) lining a stairway in a huge garden in Hawaii.

What gorgeous leaves that 'Sumawongii'!

This look includes Ligustrum, King Palm, Dwarf Lantana, Agave, Sansevieria

Thank you for the kind words. You might consider "Flaming Wind" Hibiscus as a substitute for Snake Plant. As for the choice of palm cluster, I would ask a reliable palm supplier in your area.

got it about the palms... thanks again!