I just bought a packet of seeds that is intended to attract beneficial insects. I hope to spread these out after my spring bulbs do their thing. I am a little worried it will look less like a pretty meadow and more like untamed dog poop area though. Our street is all very landscaped meticulous front yards.
2 Likes
This doesn’t quite count as a hellstrip, but I walk past this fig tree all the time, it’s a great use of the “planting strip” along with the raised beds around it:
5 Likes
Awesome. Our pollinators need all the help they can get, poor things. Those sound like the right flowers. Good job, post pictures when they grow.
That’s really nice, and clever use of space. It’s simple and inviting.
1 Like
@disc4tw this conversation encouraged me to just up and remove the grass. Well, hire it out.
One hellstrip, nekkid and ready for tough xeriscape-adjacent blue and purple flowers.
One lawn ready for clover (the white is chips not snow)
I just ordered a lot of blue and purple flowers - catmint, and more agastache and salvia. All are supposed to be under 20" (technically I should be under 12" but I doubt the municipality will be out with a ruler).
My hellstrip will be flippin’ gorgeous.
8 Likes
that looks great, ready to go. I’m hiring up a local odd job guy who is living rough in the alley to tear it all out on ours, or to help me move cinder blocks to edge it. the guy works on everybody’s house on the block but he’s been homeless in the neighborhood a couple years. he’s got bad depression but really works hard. he’s community and has stopped a lot of thieves from getting into the back sheds in that alley. good guy but slipped through some cracks
…
we will put in edibles that are drought resistant. thinking mint on one end, prairie sage on the other, then dry land berries and some kale mixed in the middle. he uses my second wifi for his phone and has been looking for free native plant seeds that grow food, which I think is a great idea. I’ll pay him for the labor and pay for dirt or blocks, he can do the lifting.
3 Likes
That’s great that you can give him some social safety net, and he can do dignity-affirming work. And cool that he’s keeping an eye out for native plants, on top of everything else.
That sounds like a great plan!
1 Like
he’s a neighbor, even if he’s in a tent. most of us on the street know him and help him out.
2 Likes
I have no sidewalk, but there is a section of the front ditch that is bordered by the road, the driveway, and a concrete insert leading into a drainage pipe under the driveway that works similarly. It burns every summer, and these days a fair amount of the rest of the ditch along the road does.
I planted a maypop, and it loves the heat. It also sprawls everywhere, so neat-freaks may freak out if you do the same elsewhere.
I’m going to install a retaining wall to form a sort of raised bed up to road level in the side of the ditch, and plant Pollinator-Palooza Prairie Seed Mix | Prairie Moon Nursery since it seems well suited to the hot, dry-er microclimate and the local VA habitat.
2 Likes
@Chills my Judith’s Favorite Fame Flower just shipped, I can’t wait. A drought-resistant succulent that’s so delicately pretty is so unusual! I hope it does well here. 
4 Likes
I scattered Walker’s Low catmint seeds in my de-grassified hellstrip. I appreciate the tip!
I saw a lot of birds hanging out, so I hope they didn’t get all of the seeds.
I’ll likely go pick up some full-grown plants at the nursery too, though. (I have to stay in that sweet spot between enough plants to make my garden sing, and my husband divorcing me for buying too many plants… It’s a fine line. 
)
2 Likes
Hope some of those seeds take for you! In my experience, catmint is also quite easy to propagate from cuttings. What’s worked for me in the past is to take cuttings at a point when the plant is growing vigorously, trim the lower leaves on the cutting, and place them in water. I use jelly jars with some pebbles in the bottom to help keep the cuttings in place. When a decent amount of roots form, I transplant them either into small pots or directly into a garden bed. Most will take and do fine (but newly rooted cuttings might have a harder time if transplanted directly into the hellstrip).
1 Like
I’m hoping mine returns… I have seed from last year as well…
If not I’ll be ordering another as it was my wife’s favorite last year.
This just came up in my yard this week. Can’t wait to see it bloom…
Scott
2 Likes
I hope you didn’t plant it near an area you sit often, my mistake was planting it in a perennial border directly under a window. I didn’t know it had bloomed until I kept smelling dead mouse wafting in the window and went out to investigate… 
4 Likes
its about 10 feet from the front door…
Hope that’s far enough…lol
Scott
1 Like