canpakes wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 7:22 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:17 pm
I flipped my strip years ago, but planted double knockout roses:
which were pretty, but not very useful for pollinators. That’s something I always regretted doing, so moving forward I’m thinking of my space as an oasis for life, a way station for the things we need to maintain balance with the mechanisms of life. It’s sounds kind of hippy’ish, but there’s wisdom there.
- Doc
Doc, if that’s an actual image of the end result of your strip conversion, I’d say that it looks great.
Regarding pollinators, may I ask what quadrant of the state you’ll be relocating to? Asking given the huge differences in climate between them, and how that’ll determine planting choices.
I’ve been experimenting with pollinator and hummingbird-friendly plants over the last couple of years since converting our strip. The poppies are coming into ‘round 2’ after our light rainstorms, and some of the penstemon are proving more dependable/adaptable than others. Size and color differences within the family are great. A current favorite are the electric blue ‘Wasatch’ type.
Watching a thousand bees do their thing in the midst of a full bloom of poppies is pretty relaxing. : )
In this area, we call that a hell strip. I have no idea why. Anyway people downtown are turning their hell strips into flower gardens and their
front yards into vegetable gardens. Plenty around here do xeriscaping. While going back and forth to hospitals downtown I was able to lay eyes on the hell strips and front yards. They look like an explosion of LIFE IN COLOR!!! You'll see, for example, a property like the one Cam showed only the front hell strip is filled with Mammoth Sunflowers(!!!) and kind of serves like a privacy screen for the house. Other houses have small hoop gardens or raised beds right in the front yard.
People in our gardeners group that have to deal with HOA's are totally jelly of the houses downtown!!
We also have plenty of um...discussions...about front yard lawns vs. growing food in the space.
This year, I intentionally decided to plant perennials that are attractive to pollinators and on the list of deer resistant plants. I ordered 7 bare root Denim and Lace Russian Sages which look like the regular Russian Sage but a bit smaller. I gathered up seeds for Coneflower, Black Eyed Susans, and Cosmos. One day (after overthinking where I was going to place the seeds in the front flower bed) I decided to "do it like a preschooler would do it". Emptied out all the seed packets into a plastic container, went out there, scratched back the soil and threw them all in around our Salvia (which the deer hate and the pollinators love).
Only the Cosmos managed to come up. I was really hoping for the Black Eyed Susans (my favorite flowers of all time--top of the list) but Cosmos never let me down so I accepted it. It didn't take long before I realized I had a volunteer gardening assistant!
This is Mama. She specializes in dead heading deer resistant flowers.
*That rope stuff is not used for a clothesline. It's a place to hang art to dry.