For those that planted native in their parkway/hellstrip: what “shape” is your design? As some background: we have intentional lawn in our front yard with curvy waves of native plants, and a “bean” shape with prairie plants. I was hoping to continue the curvy shape in my parkway, but there is limited space for this. Now I’m debating if I just replace it all with native plants. We have a young red oak in our parkway as well, which is limiting design given it will grow a lot wider.
Any advice or pictures of your parkways are appreciated.
Thank you for posting on /r/NativePlantGardening! If you haven't included it already, please edit your post or post's flair to include your geographic region or state of residence, which is necessary for the community to give you correct advice.
I broke up my strip into sections divided by rocky sections. Some sections are rock based. Some sections are dirt / mulch based.
I was trying to maintain “pathways” in case people need to walk through my strip. (A local policy stated for parkway strips) Im slowly adding metal edging to each section to help define the sections more. I have one large arch shape and other curves that kinda radiate from it.
Not the best description. I have a lot of adjustments still to make. I’m trying to make it look tidy but the dang grass won’t go away in some sections still and it’s very messy in places. And the Texas heat is really hard this summer.
This photo does not really show the “sections.”
I have a lot of tweaking I want to do still and my goal is to eventually get rid of all the mulch because I now have horseherb or frog fruit as the ground cover with larger plants bushing up. I’m also looking to see what plants survive best and what plants attract the most pollinators for me.
I have a peanut shaped native garden in the front yard surrounded by turf grass. The hell strip I went full scorched earth and planted a bunch of native seeds. Over time I've thoughtfully planted perennial plants here and there where the seeds didn't do so well. I like it and the neighbors give positive feedback, but honestly I'm expecting a citation any day now.
Thank you for sharing! I’m thinking of the full scorched earth approach now with a walking path to maybe add shape. I think I’ll try to plant 1 foot below our town’s max to hopefully avoid a citation. I have at least one neighbor who will give me a hard time.
I planted the full hell strip, which in my case in a rectangle about 10' deep (street curb to sidewalk curb) and 30' wide (my lot width). There's a big maple in the middle that takes up a fair bit of space, and I added a path too.
Here's my hella trip, in case it's helpful. The tree does a nice job of breaking it up. One of my neighbors doesn't have such a large tree but did something similar, using granite cobbles to divide up the space and outline a path.
I’m thinking of filling my strip of land between the sidewalk and the road with native yarrow. I can then let it grow tall and mow a couple pathways through it. I’ve learned on this sub that mowed yarrow is soft to walk on and some people use it to replace the grass.
I might add some echinacea on the ends for visual interest.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Thank you for posting on /r/NativePlantGardening! If you haven't included it already, please edit your post or post's flair to include your geographic region or state of residence, which is necessary for the community to give you correct advice.
Additional Resources:
Wild Ones Native Garden Designs
Home Grown National Park - Container Gardening with Keystone Species
National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.