Transform Your Barren Parking Strip Into Pollinator-Friendly Habitat

A vibrant and lively parking strip garden on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Photo: Tracey Byrne
One of the most awkward, yet rewarding, gardening challenges can be found in that neglected patch of turfgrass between the sidewalk and the curb: your parking strip. Across the U.S., gardeners have been enthusiastically transforming this “hell strip” into viable habitat. These sidewalk ecosystems are critical for the tiny creatures that inhabit them and when connected they serve as mini-wildlife corridors. Parking strip gardens can be planted to provide us with healing herbs, bouquets of wildflowers, juicy berries, and organic vegetables, as well as daily close-up interactions with the myriad pollinators and decomposers—bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, worms, snails, and spiders—that call these strips home.

Bumble bee on flowering chives. Photo: Tracey Byrne
Every arthropod-friendly parking strip helps to strengthen local populations and make them more resilient by fostering biodiversity. The Xerces Society says this is good news for all flor...