Creating a Park Strip Pollinator Garden
What to do when you have a large garden space but it happens to be between the road and the sidewalk?
I’ll admit that at first I had no idea what to do with the space either. It’s 5 feet wide by 68 feet long and all I could think was that I wanted it to be low maintenance. Well that changed quickly when we cut our lilac bushes to expand the backyard. Without the lilacs, where would all the bees go? So low maintenance quickly became high maintenance, but it’s so worth it.
It started out with wanting an area for bees, but then we couldn’t forget about the butterflies, oh and what about the hummingbirds, now we can’t leave off regular birds. At that point we decided to just focus on creating an environment for wildlife to enjoy.
When sourcing for plants we took a lot of guidance from the California Native Plant Society and from the arboretum at the University of California Santa Cruz. Checking out arboretums and local public gardens are a great way to see what plants do well in your climate and many have gift shops with plants that you can purchase. A good 60% of the plants that we have were purchased at the arboretum.
Now for the details. The space that we have is about 5 feet wide and 68 feet long. In order to keep track of it we split it into 3 different sections and sketched out where everything could go. It really helped us figure out what we could fit and where everything would go. The original plan had 54 (54!) plants going in, so it was important to keep things as organized as possible. Below you will see our original plans for the sections (it has changed slightly since planting). Native plants have their technical name in parentheses.
Section 1:
This section runs right up to a busy intersection, so it starts out low to the ground with some native Ceanothus plants (native lilac). Since this plan we no longer have the Shasta daisy or the bee plants. They tend to spread too much and we decided to keep the area lower to the ground with low spreading lilacs into a fruiting shrub.
Current plants in this area are: Ceanothus Heart’s Desire (Ceanothus gloriosus 'Heart's Desire'), Ceanothus Pt. Sierra (Ceanothus maritimus 'Point Sierra'), Glossyleaf Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sensitiva), Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa), and a Red-Flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens)
Section 2:
This is the area that has changed the most since the plan was made. There was a vicious gopher attack in August of 2020 that destroyed a good amount of the yarrow and the Mysty plants. This is also an area that people tend to cross over a lot so it’s one that I’m still trying to figure out what works best. The Santa Rosa Sage was constantly getting trampled by people and dogs so it has since been replaced with the Salmonberry, which is a bit more upright and robust. That was originally supposed to go in section 1, but I moved it over to the high-traffic area and will be putting a Manzanita in its old place.
Current plants in this area are: Goodwin Creek Lavender, Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’, Seaside Daisy (Erigeron glaucus), Seabreeze Daisy, Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), and Narrow Leaf Milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis).
The current plans is to turn the milkweed space into a pathway for delivery drivers and everyone else that seems to cross this space. I will post an update of this once completed. The milkweed will then get spread closer to the Dark Star and some will go into sections 1 and 3.
Section 3:
This section has pretty much remained intact. We only had a couple of plants that were trampled in its early days (Korean mint, a California Fuchsia, and the poquito lavender). The only plant that received a replacement was the Korean mint. We placed a Hot Lips Salvia in its place. For the other losses, the surrounding plants grew vigorously enough that the empty places were soon swallowed up.
Current plants in this area are: huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), California lilac (Ceanothus maritimus 'Popcorn'), lavenders, Chilean guava, Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa), California fuchsia (Epilobium canum), Costa Rica Blue salvia, Nuevo Leon salvia, Caribbean Sage [salvia selleana], Hot lips salvia.
I hope that this was helpful for you! If you have any questions be sure to let me know. If you want to stay up to date on any changes that happens to this area or the rest of the garden in real time be sure to check out our instagram (click here).
Until next time,
