I think your best bet would be some nice Mediterranean fan palms. Put some Ivy geraniums as a trailing flowering vine to give some nice color.
Mediterranean fan palms are not single trunk palms, but they look nice and can easily be pruned to be single trunked palms. They take a long time to outgrow their containers and should be fine in the dry west coast weather!

Canary Island date palms are nice, but extremely thorny and will eventually outgrow their containers (In a matter of 5 years!).

You can definitely get away with planting some agaves and lantanas as flowering plants.

If you put a nice shade canopy over your deck, you will be able to grow lots more because it will help keep frost out in the winter, and also keep the desert sun out in the summer!

-Alex

Thx Alex.

No there wouldn't be a canopy over the deck. And the property is in the desert near Palm Springs. So 70deg in the winter and 110 deg in the summer. Dry desert air.

I wonder what'r species are the skinny palms in the background? There are hundreds of them in the complex. May be I can grow those in the planters and when they out grow, just dominate them to the complex?

I cant tell what they are because your pics are to small. Maybe mexican fan palms?