Paul Nawrocki - "Paul The Palm Doctor"

Paul's backyard is a lush green refuge of tropical plants guarded by coconut and other palms.

If you read Floridata often you'll know that I'm partial to palms. Several years ago, during a visit to South Florida I saw an advertisement for "Paul The Palm Doctor" that stirred my interest. At the time I just happened to have need of a Palm Doctor as one of my Hispaniola palm (Sabal domingensis) was experiencing an attack of what I call "whiteleaf" which is when one of the leaves on a palm suddenly turns white and dies. On one occasion the whole palm suddenly died so I was in need of professional advice before I suffered another casualty. Recently I met Paul (the Palm Doctor) Nawrocki online and discovered that he has a range of interests in addition to palms so I want to introduce you to him as our latest Floridata Celebrity Gardener.

Paul is well known to South Florida gardeners and homeowners through both his palm care consulting business and his thewisegardener.com web site. The site is loaded with info and other resources that is especially useful to gardeners Zone 9 and 10 but anyone who loves the tropics and tropical plants will enjoy it too.

Paul's latest project is trying to grow breadfruit trees. This is another plant that interests us both - I've wanted to eat a breadfruit ever since reading about them in 4th Grade geography class.

Paul was born in New York City and received a degree in agriculture from Rutgers University. His love of palms and places warm and tropical brought him to South Florida. He lives and gardens in Pembroke Pines (Fort Lauderdale), Florida where his yard provides growing evidence that he really loves tropical plants!

Over the last thirteen years, Paul has created a small miracle where he lives, by transforming the a very un-"Eden" like, highly alkaline limestone based "soil" former Everglades swamp (that won't support much more than grasses), into a tropical paradise of sorts, with the addition of literally tons of sand and river pebbles for better drainage along with regular additions of organic soil amendments including: vegetable peelings, pine needles and oak leaves along with shredded bald cypress and melaleuca bark. The work was worth the effort for Paul, as his landscape rarely requires any fertilizers and is an eco-system that lives in harmony NEVER requiring the use of pesticides since the birds, lizards, spiders, and dragonflies keep the bug populations in check!

The place is punctuated by palms and overflowing with showy tropical species including some of the most spectacular flowering tropical trees like the royal poinciana (Delonix regia) and yellow trumpet tree (Tabebuia argentea). The palms however are his favorites and among these we are in full agreement that the coconut palm is the Gold Medal palm of the Millenium and the standard by which all others are measured. His choice for second place is the Joey palm (Johannesteijmannia spp) a palm with huge 10 ft (3.1 m) diamond shaped leaves which I had not even heard of until I saw it on thewisegardener.com.

I laugh at myself because I'm always trying to grow Zone 9 plants in my Zone 8 garden and thinking that the world would be perfect if only I gardened in Zone 10. Well Paul is in Zone 10 and his current garden quest involves trying to grow Zone 11 breadfruit trees! (I guess all gardeners have a tendency to "Zone out" no matter where they live.) Even in South Florida temperatures can sometimes dip into the 30's which causes great discomfort to his baby breadfruits and other tender treasures of the tropics. One of these is the spectacular red sealing wax (Cyrtostachys renda) palm.

Paul's red sealing wax palms

The toucan is happy that the TropicRiverWoods will protect his home in the Panamanian forest.

Red sealing wax palm is uniquely showy with shiny scarlet leaf shafts (that look like red sealing wax) supporting rich green feathery (pinnate) leaves. If I lived in Zone 10, I know this would be a prized palm in my yard too but unfortunately this very tender palm prefers Zone 11. Paul has planted his where it is protected on frosty nights by the warmth radiated by the house's heatpump. By exploiting this sort of microclimate, Paul has rewarded himself with a sensational palm.

Many of us garden and love to grow things and most of us want to "save the planet". Paul does too but he is literally saving at least a part of the planet. There is 50 of acres of lush rainforest at Finca Quatro, in Bocas del Toro Province in the Republic of Panamá on which Paul has established the TropicRiverWoods Preserve

Paul describes the property on his website: The future TropicalRiverWoods encompasses almost 50 acres (20 hectares) of virgin rolling tropical rainforest woodland, replete with tropical species of butterflies, mountain streams, keel-billed toucans, macaws, three-toed sloths, howler monkeys, bearing aged guanabana, lime & cacao trees, bamboo, and numerous bromeliad, banana, and heliconia species. In the midst of our first encounter with this terrestrial treasure, we realised very quickly that we were blessed with the discovery of a lifetime and also recognised that our project here, as we envisaged it, could well become a preeminent legacy for the future of our often ravaged mother earth!

This TRW sloth is happy too because it means his home is protected so he won't have to move.

Paul has set up a non-profit organization to support the preservation of Tropic RiverWoods and he's working hard to ensure that this special place is preserved for future generations of all species! If you would like to read more about this project visit the website at www.tropicriverwoods.org. We wish Paul the best of luck with his dream project and hope that he'll keep us up to date with its progress.

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future the TRW will be completed and Paul can move his breadfruit trees to Panama where they can escape the occasional scourges of frosty cold that sometimes lash Broward County!

Paul surveys the rainforest at Tropical RiverWoods in the Republic of Panama.

I've met a lot of interesting people since I began Floridata and it's especially fun to meet a fellow palm and tropical plant enthusiast. It's also helpful to met a Palm Doctor that I can tap for advice when my palms suffer whiteleaf - I'll call Paul the Palm Doctor and I hope that you will too.

I enjoyed meeting Paul and am happy to have this chance to introduce him to you. We wish him the best of luck with his breadfruits, his palm doctoring and especially the TropicRiverWoods project - and we thank him for being Floridata's third Celebrity Gardener!

- Jack 1/28/04

NOTE: the sudden appearance of a whitened and dying leaf in Sabal palms is caused by palm weevil infestation. It can sometimes be treated with liquid Sevin® applied directly to the bud with a 40-60% success rate. Thanks Doc!

Photos by Paul Nawrocki, Copyright 2004

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