There are many challenges when planting a garden, including considering damage to retaining walls, sidewalks, foundations, and underground utilities. Often the easiest way to overcome these tricky spots is planting small plants that won’t have a large impact on nearby infrastructure. But what if you need a larger, more substantial element?

Parajubaea is a genus of palms with graceful crowns of swaying, silver-backed fronds and edible nuts. The two species that we grow down at Grubb & Nadler come from seasonally dry, cool mountain valleys on the western slope of the Andes in Bolivia. This is probably why they thrive in California, while struggling in other palm paradises like Hawaii and Florida.

A dreamy tropical vacation may not be in the cards right now, but there's no shortage of reasons to get away from it all. We're feeling all the lush jungle feels down here at FGG. So many plants that love our Bay Area climate also have a distinctly tropical look.

We can grow many kinds of palms in our coastal California gardens — palm trees, shrubby palms, bamboo palms, little foliage palms — lucky us! Our guide to everything palm has all the info you need to make the best selections for your garden.

Ceroxylon quindiuense, the rare Andean wax palm, grows happily here in San Francisco, where the cool humidity (fog!) mimics the climate of the Colombian cloud forest. We have this palm in stock now!

We all know San Francisco has lots of fabulous quirks, and the climate is one of the weirdest. For visitors and newcomers, our weather can be a puzzle, but for plant nerds (like all of us here at Flora Grubb Gardens), this particular puzzle is what makes San Francisco a gardening paradise.