Anybody know about trees?

[limit refugee]

I just bought a house and spent the day cutting down some ugly ass weed trees that I never want to see again. Now we want to plant some sexy new ones, and somewhat tropical at that. A nice canopy and twisted branches like on this badboy, the dracaena draco is perfect...

[image][/image]

problem is, that one will grow to only 1 meter after 10 years, and I want to enjoy my trees before I'm dead.

We dig the canary island date palm, but again, seems like I'll never be able to hang my hammock off one of them anytime soon, although I may be wrong about that.

We live in New Orleans, zone 8b, for what thats worth.

What the hell do we grow...we can go up to 25 feet and we aren't against tasty stuff growing off it.

Any ideas? Any cool shrubs or other flowering bushes I should know about? Anybody have a little idea here...I'm counting on someone to be smarter than me on this.

thanks

[MrMon]

If you are looking for some edibles, these guys have some pretty interesting stuff. Your zone will prove to be a challenge, but I know they have some things that will fit that I can't grow.

http://www.raintreenursery.com/