Reinvent your parking strip

No mowing in Portland: After

"Within six months, I was so thrilled," Pokorny says of her parking-strip garden. She took this photo in late spring 2008. She watered only about every three weeks the first year and expects eventually to water hardly at all. She says she was surprised that bulbs have flourished in this environment. That's probably because they can bloom amid spring rains and go dormant in the hottest months.

Stylish in L.A.

These homeowners created a low-maintenance landscape of stones and succulents on the city strip in front of their stylish Los Angeles home.

Pioneering project in Denver

When Jennifer Reinbrecht and her husband bought their Denver home 10 years ago, the parking strips were paved with weed-infested gravel. "It was so ugly," Reinbrecht recalls. "People threw their trash, they let their dogs use it."

She was inspired to garden there by Colorado garden writer Lauren Springer Ogden, co-author of “Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens That Honor Plants, Place, and Spirit,” a pioneer in the parking-strip gardening movement who coined the phrase "hell strip" for these challenging plots. Ogden champions the use of hardy, drought-tolerant plants. Today, Reinbrecht is still improving her gardens. "It took about five years before I was able to move all the rocks," she says.

Blooming strips light up Denver neighborhood

Jennifer Reinbrecht's hell-strip gardens — the first in her neighborhood — span both sides of her high-traffic sidewalk for about a half-block. Although the strips are filled with vibrant color, the carefully chosen plants need only about a half-inch of water a month.

"Neighbors stop all the time and say, 'Thanks, we've watched this since the beginning. It looks great,'" Reinbrecht says. The best reward: "It was my hope that other people would be inspired to do the same thing,” she says. "It's been slow, but it's happening."

Seattle loves hell-strip gardens

Strip gardens are popular in Seattle neighborhoods. Sightings are celebrated in a blog, Greenwalks. This hell strip uses plants and colors that are similar or identical to those in the home's private garden and, as a result, the gardens on private and public land harmonize beautifully.

Call before you dig

The city of Seattle encourages strip gardens. But it, like many cities, has rules. Residents need a (free) permit to plant anything but sod. That gives the city a chance to educate gardeners on do’s and don'ts, including maximum plant heights and widths so plants won't obstruct drivers' views, trip up pedestrians or tangle with overhead power lines. A separate permit and an informal plan are required for structures — a fence or rockery, for example. Also, Roy Francis, Seattle's urban forestry manager, cautions gardeners everywhere to call their local utility companies before starting to dig, to ensure they don't cut into buried pipes or wires.

Where ever you live, be sure to find out what your local laws are before you pick up a shovel.

Year-round beauty

This Seattle strip looks good even in the dead of winter because the gardener has artfully mixed smaller stones, big rocks, trees and lower-growing plants. Stones were used to pave a path from the street to the sidewalk through the strip.

Elegant, symmetrical plantings

Symmetrical plantings of tall trees and low hedges of evergreen plants integrate this strip into the handsome, formal garden outside this Seattle building. Designs like this — using easy-care perennial plants to fill space and cut down the need for weeding — are practical choices for parking strips.

Low-maintenance strip

This easy-care Seattle strip proves that it doesn't take great expense or ambition to improve greatly over the usual strip of dead grass.

Ripping strips in Utah

Robust parking-strip plantings like this one near Salt Lake City can be wildly colorful. Water — or the lack of it — is a Utah gardener's biggest problem. To help conserve water and save rivers and wildlife, the Utah State University Extension Service and the Utah Rivers Council sponsor a "Rip Your Strip" program, challenging gardeners to replace thirsty parking-strip lawns with drought-tolerant plants.

"We're trying to educate people that there are alternatives," says Maggie Shao, an extension service horticulturalist. The Utah Rivers Council's plant lists are geared toward locals, but anyone who registers (and pledges to "rip" their strip) can use the tips and information, including instructions for building a stone walkway across a strip and garden designs.

Stop watering the sidewalk

Parking-strip gardens like this one are common in the Salt Lake area. They solve the difficulty of trying to water a parking strip. Dave Bastian, Utah Rivers Council membership and outreach coordinator, who gardens his strip, says that before, "I was either watering the sidewalk or I was not watering enough of the grass."

5,000 gardeners took the pledge

So far, 5,000 Salt Lake residents and businesses have taken the Rip Your Strip pledge. "When I walk to work I see a lot of ripped strips," says Dave Bastian, Utah Rivers Council membership and outreach coordinator.

The council estimates that replacing the average Salt Lake City lawn with even moderately drought-tolerant plants would save 90,000 gallons of water and $135 on water bills each year per home.

A strip-garden design

Salt Lake City landscape designer Chase Fetter, owner of Sage's Way Landscape and Design, created this sample garden plan for the Utah Rivers Council. It features a meandering swale of gravel and small- and medium-sized rocks (fist size) with mulched, slightly raised beds and two flagstone paths level with the sidewalk.

Fetter suggests hardy, drought-tolerant plants that can be grown in most U.S. gardens. (See the key under the image for the suggested plants.)

No curb needed in Oregon

The roadside gardens at Wild Ginger Farm  in Beavercreek, Ore., prove that a curb and sidewalk aren't necessary for a strip garden. Wild Ginger lists tips for hell-strip gardeners here.

Native plants are the best choice

Dry-land plants native to your region are the best choices for a parking strip that gets punishment from foot and auto traffic, animals and wind. Thoughtfully placed rocks help anchor plants to the roadside slope here at Wild Ginger Farm in Beavercreek, Ore.