What it costs
Palm maintenance runs $125 to $350 per palm, depending on height, frond count, and whether it's a single palm or a row along a driveway or bay-front lot. A yard-height sabal with a light skirt is the low end. A tall Washingtonia needing a bucket truck or spikes to reach a heavy crown of dead fronds costs more, mostly for the access, not the cutting itself.
What we actually work on
Two species cover most of what's planted here. Sabal palms (Sabal mexicana and the related cabbage palm) are the toughest thing you can put in the ground on this coast, they tolerate wind, drought, and salt better than almost any other tree we plant here. Washingtonia fan palms are the tall, feathery ones planted in the historic medians along Broadway, in matching rows next to the live oaks, a planting pattern that goes back to the early 1900s. Queen palms and pygmy date palms show up in yards too but handle salt and cold worse than either of the natives, so they need more frequent attention after a hard freeze or a surge event.
Our process
- Look at the crown first. Uniform browning on frond tips, especially after a storm, is usually salt burn, not disease, and it grows out with time and fresh water.
- Remove fully dead fronds and old seed pod stalks, called boots on some species, that build up under the crown.
- Leave green fronds alone. Removing living, green fronds to "clean up" a palm actually weakens it, more on that below.
- Check the crown and trunk for soft spots, leaning, or unusual insect activity. Confirmed palm weevil damage is rare on this coast, but we still look.
- Apply a palm-specific slow-release fertilizer with potassium and magnesium if the tree is showing nutrient deficiency spotting on older fronds, not just salt burn.
- Haul fronds and debris the same day.
What makes this harder than it looks
The biggest failure mode in palm care isn't disease, it's people. A "hurricane cut," stripping a palm down to a bare tuft of fronds at the very top because it looks tidy or someone thinks it'll survive wind better, is close to the worst thing you can do to a palm. It removes the tree's food source, stresses the bud, and leaves it more vulnerable, not less, going into storm season. We won't do it. Salt burn also gets misdiagnosed constantly. Homeowners see brown tips after a surge event and assume the palm is dying, when a flush of new green growth the following season is the normal recovery pattern. And root systems on made-land lots, common on Tiki Island where fill soil sits over old canal dredge material, don't anchor a tall palm the same way native soil does, which matters if a palm is leaning and you're deciding whether it needs support or removal.
How long it takes
A single yard palm: 20 to 40 minutes. A row of five or six tall Washingtonias along a driveway or bay front: half a day. We often bundle a palm maintenance visit with hurricane prep trimming on the same property since we're already on site with equipment, ask about the combined rate.
What sets this apart
We prune for the palm's health first, appearance second. That means a palm we've maintained sometimes looks a little fuller than a neighbor's freshly "hurricane cut" tree, and that's on purpose, because a fuller crown is a stronger, better-fed palm.
We don't do hurricane cuts. If you want the crown stripped to a tuft, you'll need to find someone else to do it.