Way to go! I recall a fellow awhile back that posted pics of his palms in a zone 3 or 4 garden; he had a fairly elaborate system of protecting them over the winter. I can't remember all the details but if I can find it I will post.

When I saw this topic title I was pretty sure this was posted to the wrong forum. Needless to say I am shocked, and really impressed. Very cool!!!

Extremely cool indeed! I hope the palm makes a summer recovery and continues to prosper.

Why do you put zone 4a in your profile, whereas us other Edmontonians generally opt for zone 3a? Are you near downtown? I notice that you note a minimum temp of -35 C last winter, whereas in my Mill Woods backyard my thermometer hit -39 C.

If you type "palm" into the search box at the bottom of the page you will find some postings about palms and other tropicals growing in zone 4. This fellow has a beautiful garden and quite an elaborate system for winter protection. Really cool!

Thanks everyone. The pictures of it recovering are in this photo album. It has another two fans I saw coming out of the crown today. It had zero protection just to clarify.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23840945@N05/

Don555,

I live near Whitemud Crossing and from my monitoring I have noticed its almost identical to city centre readings. Far south Edmonton is the coldest area in the whole city. I've found even Leduc has warmer extreme lows (-37c this year). Its weird that the international airport is so much colder than anywhere within 50 miles of the city consistently every year (-46c this year) and anything close to the south henday is the worst in the city. -35C is the coldest I've seen in many years where I live and thats one degree off zone4a so I basically consider my area zone 4a. I've had many years that don't break -30 sitting in zone 5a.

Oiltown, is your wildmill palm planted against the house foundation? What size did it recover to? What size was it at the end of last season? Just curious as perhaps we could treat as a perennial in our climate?

That probably is some kind of record for survival unaided/unsheltered in the harshest climate.

Probably not a record in terms of latitude, as I believe there are some growers in Norway who would be further north than you doing windmills. But there climate is much, much milder than Calgary, as they are at the end of the Gulf Stream and living in sheltered coastal fjords.

Very impressive accomplishment.

I'm in zone 4b - I have tried Windmill Palms and gave up - switched to feather palm and started using the pot-in-pot method to move my "tropical paradise" indoors for the winter. I have a blog at ChuckZamzow.com (still working on it).

Here is a link that might be useful: Tropical Plants in Minnesota