I'm in the Houston area, Zone 9. We generally have long, hot summers and mild winters, but we've had more than our share of hard freezes recently (the infamous February 2021 winter storm, along with cold snaps in December 2022 and January 2024 that saw our overnight lows dip into the upper teens).
All of our tropical landscaping was put in by the original owners of our house, who built our pool in the late 90s. It is a lot more "complicated" than what we'd have chosen, but we've come to appreciate it. The palm trees have survived the multiple freezes (I did wrap up the palms nearest the pool with tarps, ahead of the last freeze). The umbrella palms, elephant ears, and banana trees aren't really practical to heat or cover. Any hard freeze turns them to mush, I cut them off and the ground level and they readily bounce back in the spring (all of the plants in my second picture were hacked to the ground in January, so this picture represents only a few months of growth - they'll be much bigger by late summer).
