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Originally Posted by NoVaPlantGuy_Z7b_8a
Slightly off topic here... Today I went with a couple friends down to a nursery about 20 minutes south of Old Town Alexandria ( for those living in and familliar with the Washington D.C. Area / Northern VA) called Holly Woods And Vines. I have not been there in about 4 years. I have to say, I was blown away and completely impressed!!!! Its cold hardy palm heaven, at least for this area.
In the past, they have always been a fairly good, larger nursery, with reasonable prices. Probably id guess one of the top 5 or so nurseries in the D.C. area at least in size. In the past, they would always have a few large mexican fan palms, a nd did have 5 sable palmettos planted at the front of the property on rt 1. ( they are just between Mt Vernon rd, and Ft. Belvoir. Anyway, so they always held somewhat of an attraction for me because of those palms. Well I was very pleasantly surprised to find today, they have finally figured out the whole cold hardy palm / yucca thing. They had at least 15-20 VERY LARGE (12-18' tall) T. Fortunei's in in large containers, running for about $850. Were talking full grown, flowering, tree size trachys! many of them were in the parking lot forming a row between lines of spaces, and several were in the front entrance along parking spaces there. They also had another 15 or so ranging in sizes from... 7-9 foot ones for $400, and some 4 to 6 foot ones for $199. Thats not a bad price for a plam that is as tall or taller than I am, and im 5'6". They also had some rather sizeable European Fan palms, about 4 of them. I was really blown away to find the next couple of things I did. They had 7 gallon Needle palms, wich were 1-2' tall clumps with several in each pot. One central large one producing fan leaves, and several other smaller "suckers" producing both strap and fan leaves. These were all $89.00. Not a bad price for such a good size and very FULL palm!
The other thing I was stunned to find, was the sheer number, and ranges in sizes of Yucca Thompsonia, and Yucca Rostrata, and many other of the "tree/ palm tree" like Yuccas, from 20' tall on down to 1' tall. I found one Rostrata that was about 4' tall of trunk, for under 100 bucks. In thier "back area" they had literally hundreds of VERY TALL Yucca's, that looked to be mainly Thompsonia and Rostrata, and some other kinds mixed in. Some were upwards of 20' or more tall. They also had back there a very large collection of very large Agaves, one of which had a 20 foot tall bloom spike on it. Then another area, also in the back, they had some VERY LARGE, maybe 15+ foot tall Sago Palms, and a couple even TALLER Widmills, probably around 20-25' tall. We did not go all the way back in, because it looked somewhat like an area that was not really "for customers" if you know what I mean.
I was very appy to see that it seems they have FINALLY caught on to all the cold hardy palm / yucca options available to us here in our area. I have been waiting for one of the big nurseries to finally figure this out, and it looks to me like they are the first ones! I plan on going back possibly tomorrow, or next weekend, and I will be taking my camera with me.
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