We live in zone 10, 28 years now (having come from the NE) and have always done our own landscaping at 3 different homes,this one being our last home build, and I can tell you for a fact there is much to learn about landscaping in Florida zone 10 and many, many things to be considered for success, a few of these are, locations of plants such as north side, south side E & W etc. not over doing the planting since we live in a natural hot house and in a year's time you can end up with a jungle!! Use a good grade of weed block or plan to do weeding every week, lot's of weeding! or plan to hire a gardener full time... plus know what to feed your plants and tree's and feed, feed, feed remember the poor things are trying to live in sand with very little nourishment, the only reason you see palm tree's with yellow fronds is because they are not fed enough, with added magnesium, also don't forget the bugs that will devour your plants as soon as you turn your back, unless you are on top of that also, and now even though we are in zone 10, we're on the way out to cover our hibiscus, ixora etc. for temps in the high 20's tonight and possible frost, yes, we even have these problems in zone 10, and hate the chore a few times each winter.

I would suggest a foundation planting bed in front of the house and a separate island around the palm. You can see in the sketch that I opted to leave only the single palm near the center front. It seems disturbing to me to have a collection of odds and ends palms in a group because they don't make a nice group. If they can't be like type palms, I'd rather see a single specimen. The architecture already carries a horizontal visual element as the base of the house. Rather than duplicate or cover that up with a hedge, use plants to temper it, and the easiest way is a mound shaped shrub below each window. It doesn't end up looking like you're trying to smother the house with shrubs. Where the windows are low to the ground, such as left of front door, instead of shrubs (that you will need to trim regularly in order to keep them low) use an 18" height groundcover -- such as Liriope -- that won't need to be height trimmed at all. It should be a FAT (double or triple) row -- not a skinny string. Consider variegated Liriope for a brighter look. Given your location, for the shrubs below windows I'd consider Thai crown of thorns. (Not the regular small-flowered one.) It would cheer up the front of your house considerably for much of the year. At the base of Robellini, consider an island of firecracker plant. Eventually, if it gets too tall, you can cut it to the ground and make it low again for a good length of time. For the moderately low groundcover used to link the separate elements together, consider tri-color oyster plant. It is at the same time soothing and cheerful and it's easy to start from pieces. You can split a gallon of it into about 15' pieces that will plant that many square feet. In one year's time it will appear grown together. (Of course, you would need to wait until February to plant it.) Near right of front door and at garage are two places you could use seasonal color. The groundcover around the single palm could be same as the foundation bed groundcover, or different. It could also be a little taller if you wanted, since it is a limited space. I can understand your wanting to get rid of the two lamp pedestals. But for sure, I would think about how you could retain the use of the electrical supply wire that they contain. Either could gain a new use: path lights ... uplights on trees ... post lamps ... downlighting from trees, etc. I would determine how you will reuse them before you demolish them. (BTW, you can make an underground splice if you use heat shrink tubing with sealant built in. I can't say that it will be in compliance with your local code since I don't know it ... just that it works and can be done.) Again, I remind that you need to work out all the proposed changes in plan view before you do any work.

Yes, I understand that the immediate intention for the play area is not to install a play set. But it's coming eventually and do you want the planting scheme to do dual duty by working now and also be ready for the future without any major alterations? Or do you want to subject yourself to the possibility of making a lot of changes when a play set is installed? A year is NOT a long time. As the play area develops, it is divided from the planting area with a bed line. The bed line is something to be figured out now, on the plan (as information about the play set/area becomes known.) The bed line divides places where people could possibly walk ("floors": lawn, low groundcover, mulch-only) from places where they couldn't ("walls" & "furniture": shrubs, perennials and tall groundcovers.) Trees ("ceilings") could be located in either areas Another possibility with the pitts is to cut them down and do a total rejuvenation -- where you control/shape their re-growth (which will happen very quickly since they already have developed root systems) -- and trim them so as NOT to reach way out into the yard. Let them grow as a much narrower hedge which is later trimmed into tree forms and reaches and screens above the fence. Based on some of the prior discussion, I'm going to speculate that one potential problem that could come up is not devoting enough depth to the planting beds (that are likely to surround most of the yard.) In general terms, this bed(s) ought to be allowed 6' depth as an average minimum. There are usually instances where it can easily be deeper, and possibly some instances where it can be shrunk to 4' when sacrifices must be made. Plants require space and trying to maintain a bed that is too skinny/shallow is not only difficult & more demanding of maintenance, but it doesn't look very good either. That's something to be mindful of.

Kimberly - I am so silly - I meant to recommend Purezza, which is the hybrid banksia which Malcolm suggested above, but I forgot to put its name in my last post. HMF says it is "almost thornless". If you can find it on Fortuniana (which seems to be the rootstock everyone from FLA is advising you to use), I would go for it. I know for a fact that banksias can be pruned down to any size you like, as a grocery store near my house has the yellow ones (banksia lutea) planted in ten 3 ft by 2 ft raised beds (with cement sides) which they use as automobile stops for parking spaces in their parking lot, and they grow them on 2-3 ft high metal trellises, and keep them relentlessly pruned down to the height of the trellises. They bloom prolifically every Spring for a long time. That is why I think Purezza could certainly be kept short enough for your pillar. Malcolm, just saying, we don't get hardly any winter chill (meaning nights below freezing) at all here in some years, and my yellow banksia bloomed every Spring no matter what. However, FLA climate is of course WAY more humid than ours, so perhaps that has something to do with it, and Purezza is a better choice than the original yellow or white banksia. Kimberly, if you decide to try Purezza, remember that banksias are a VERY old type of rose, and you cannot expect any of them to grow to maturity in a few months. If you plant one, remember the rhyme for climbing roses: "First year sleeping", (growing roots underground - not much activity noticed above ground - this is NORMAL), "Second year creeping", (putting out short canes which sort of flop around), "Third year leaping" (climbing canes appear, which will need to be trained as horizontally as you can - many people wrap them around pillars. Good luck - and please let us know if you do decide to try one rose in your back yard. Your front yard design plans sound gorgeous - we would all like to see pics of both yards when you have platned the roses. Jackie