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Thursday, September 10, 2015

Effective use of parking strip space: raised beds for strawberries

Many communities have an area known as a parking strip, which is a narrow piece of ground between street and sidewalk on private residential and business lots. This is also called a parkway. Sandwiched between two pieces of city property, the parking strip isn't exactly a prized canvas for landscape design. Most parking strips I've ever seen are either filled with rocks or lawn. In the case of lawn in the strip, this can be a terrible water-waster when sprinklers irrigate more of the sidewalk than grass.

This yard, in contrast, shows a great use of the narrow parking strip space with raised beds for strawberries.



The homeowner attached reflective panels to the beds on the street side for greater visibility when people park their cars. The beds are built around the water meter.





Note: some city may have restrictions on whether structures can be added to a parking strip; check with your town first if you're thinking of making garden boxes there. (How I feel about such nitty-gritty oversight is a post for another day!)

I'm always on the prowl for productive uses of the parking strip, and would love to learn what ideas you've seen or implemented. Strawberries taste better than grass, don't you agree?

3 comments:

David said...

Jennifer, what a great idea for a parking strip. The soil usually isn't the best in parking strips so raised beds are also a great idea. I used my parking strip for spring flowers. Crocus are the earliest flowers to bloom here in Nebraska. I planted Crocus right in with the grass on the parking strip. Every Spring I'm greeted with a wonderful display of flowers which are done by the first grass mowing day. It's a great way to anticipate Spring and yet have the summer grass in the parkway. It's just my way of having flowers and grass too.

Have a great day in the garden.

daisy g said...

Love this great use of space! Who wouldn't rather have berries to eat than grass?

Love the new header too!

NOT THAT KIND OF FARMER said...


Thanks for sharing useful info, here i get lots of knowledge about it.