The danger of buying myself thinking time at our secluded cabin is that my mind runs amok with ideas I want to pursue with little reasonable thought given to my capacity to complete these projects. One thing is for certain, though—I am ready to recreate our entire front yard and parking strip. To make it seem more plausible, I’m breaking the parking strip down into its own project.
I estimate that the parking strip in question is about eight feet wide and sixty feet long. I’m estimating because I’m at the cabin and don’t have access to it now—only in my mind’s eye. I found out that some gardeners refer to parking strips as “hell strips,” which seems appropriate. Ours currently only features bad grass, dandelions, and the water meter/shutoff valve. I only use it to for placing the garbage, recycling, and yard waste containers for pick up. So, it is a hideous waste of 480 square feet of what could be a colorful garden.
An eight-foot long, eight-foot wide patio to accommodate the waste containers and make the water valve accessible will be built first. I don’t see this being particularly challenging—I just need to root out the sod and make the ground level before putting the bricks down.
The strip is too public to be useful for food production and dogs do their business there every day—another factor in looking more toward aesthetics and less to food production. So, my idea is to turn it into a long perennial border. 24” edges on the street and house side will feature ground hugging mats of plants so as not to interfere with parking cars or the walking neighbors/dogs. The center strip will feature taller perennials of varied heights, colors, and bloom times. This is the south side of the house, so gets a LOT of sunshine and should be a great place to grow sun-loving flowering plants.
For the low-growing edges, I plan to use the following:
- Ceratostigma
- Dianthus (several types) from seed
- Campanula poscharskyana from divisions
- Geranium macrorrhizum from divisions
- Cerastium tomentosum from purchased plants
- Thymus (several types) from purchased plants
- Sedums (several types) from cuttings/purchased plants
- Sempervivums from cuttings/purchased plants
For the middle of the bed, I plan to add:
- Achillea (Summer Pastels or similar) from seed
- Anemone–japanese “Honorine Jobert” from purchased plants
- Aquilegia (long-blooming mix) from seed
- Aster from purchased plants
- Dicentra from purchased plants
- Iris sibirica from purchased plants
- Lychnis coronaria from seedlings in the yard/seeds
- Nepeta from seed
- Papaver orientale “Pizzicato” from seed
- Penstemon from seed or purchased plants
- Echinacea from seed
- Agastache from seed
- Geranium (various) from purchased plants
- Sidalcea from seed
This will be a full-year project, to end in April 2018, featuring the following steps:
- Find out if the City of Seattle has any limitations on parking strip use and if approvals or permits are needed. Notify City of intent to dig parking strip up—have them mark any danger zones—May 2017
- Note: See the CAM here for Seattle parking strips
- Order the seeds needed and start them Summer 2017
- Measure the “patio” and put landscape cloth and paper down to kill the grass (Summer 2017)
- Pot up divisions and cuttings Summer and Fall 2017
- Order the patio supplies and build patio Fall 2017
- Cover the rest of the strip with newspaper/tarps/landscape cloth/mulch/leaves to kill it over the winter—Fall 2017
- Winter the plant starts in the greenhouse
- Order the purchased plants February/March 2018 for April delivery
- Peel away the landscape cloth and all else and dig leaves and fertilizer into the entire strip—March/April 2018
- Plant out all the starts – late April 2018. Shop for fillers if any space remains.
- Weed and water carefully until the strip is bursting with plants (Summer 2018)