The parkway is the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street. There’s a book called Hellstrip that specifically talks about the challenges and presumably solutions to designing and planting this special location. I thought about reading it, but I’ve had some experience with this challenging environment, so I’ll just jump right in where fools fear to tread (but not most people who park in the street so it’s wise to plan for that.)
A Checkered Past
Our current hellstrip (and it really is that at the time this is written) is about 28′ wide and 11′ deep with 2 rounded corners and a huge stump somewhere below the surface – and we don’t know the exact extent or what other roots may exist in this space. Sharing that underground space is a natural gas pipe, a water pipe and the sanitary sewer line that used to go from the house to the street. Near and on the surface is a mix of wood chips and soil from the ground-up stump, rocks and roots and weeds. There isn’t much any actual grass because the gumballs never got picked up and were at least 6″ deep – no grass here! There was a sweet gum tree here that I had cut down. Anyone who has lived with gumballs and been responsible for keeping them off the sidewalk, out of the street (and sewers) and picked up out of the grass will know why. I have a friend who stepped on a gumball, fell and broke her arm. They are good for keeping cats out of flower pots, though.
The Goal
I want the parkway to be a good representation of a simple native planting – kind of a “welcome mat”. The neighbors are curious about what’s going to happen with the lot, and this will hopefully give them an idea of things to come and reassure them that it’s not going to be an eyesore (for too much longer.)
The Parkway Plan
(so far)
As you can see, a plan doesn’t have to be perfect, but it helps if you measure your space and note the immovable stuff like stumps, curbs, signs, fences, etc. I should have noted the sidewalk (where the 28′ is), the street (on the other side) and the two driveways to the left and right. If you look at the photos, you may notice the rounded corners on the curb are much more rounded and not so squared off. We’re lucky to live in a walkable neighborhood with 5′ wide sidewalks on 4th Street.
When I actually get out there with a spade and the plants, I’ll lay them out and think about it in more detail. The plants my not go exactly where they’re noted here, and they may even be different ones. I’m thinking I’ll plant shorter ones in front, taller ones in back, and with a mix of colors.
The Parkway Plantings
Street Trees
The honeylocust tree will be planted about 4′ back from the street and 5-7′ from the north end of the parkway.
It’s currently impossible to plant two trees since the stump prevents planting. I don’t know exactly where the stump is located, but it’s one of my goals to find out – before I plant any flowers.
We’ll need to CALL JULIE before we plant much more than grass here. As the company who pulled up the invasive burning bushes planted over the gas line at my house next door said in the fall of 2015, “We don’t want to end up on Channel 20 News!“
Since we can’t plant a second tree in the parkway, the red buckeye will be planted in the front yard about where the second tree would have gone, but about 20′ further back from the street.
Flowers
Lady luck smiled on me at the Farmer’s Market on Friday when I found a variety of relatively short, colorful native plants on sale. Among them are two kinds of low-growing sedum, a yarrow, a red/brown variety of black-eyed susan, two colors of New England Aster, and two varieties of tickseed. These will be planted in the center below the honeylocust tree and between the honeylocust tree and the stump and maybe south of the stump.
Lawn Border
I’m going to plant an edging of grass about a mower-width wide around the entire parkway: easy to mow and eases concerns about “unmown weeds”. I’ll plant the no-mow fine fescue since there will be some shade here, it’s a small area easy to water and I have a leftover bag of seed in an airtight container in the garage.
Stumped
What to do with the stump? The stump-grinding company did a great job, but even if it’s below the soil by a couple of inches, there’s no way anything is going to survive on top of it through a hot summer. As an alternative to simply mulching it, I’m thinking of creating a tiny dry pond using river rocks in different sizes. The flowers will nearly obscure it, but that’s OK since it would add some depth and interest. Another alternative would be to uncover it and put a statue, a rock cairn or a garden troll on it. We’ll see what it looks like uncovered and what it may call out to become.
You can barely see the stump depression in the upper half of the space.