Get A Low-Maintenance Yard While Attracting Pollinators With Hellstrip Gardening

Creating a beautiful and functional yard that's as pleasant for pollinators as it is for people can be a joy, but there's one area that is often neglected in this practice: the hellstrip. This is the terrifying title many give to the inconvenient and often oddly shaped strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. As the name implies, it can be a bit of a nightmare to design around and deal with, but with a bit of work, you can turn yours into a beautiful low-maintenance pollinator patch by planting tough flowers that attract beneficial insects.

Part of the reason hellstrips are such an annoyance for many urban gardeners and homeowners is because they often belong to the city or municipality, not the homeowners. While homeowners are generally responsible for maintaining these strips of land, they don't always have full autonomy on what they can and can't plant there or how they can design them. Before starting your own hellstrip garden, be sure to check with your local zoning laws to see what, if any, restrictions are in place for gardening on your hellstrip.

Once you know there are no restrictions on planting your hellstrip, you can get to work. Designing a garden for your this space isn't necessarily that different from designing other types of gardens, so you still need to consider how much sun the area gets, what type of soil it has, and how much irrigation it receives. Hellstrips can often be inconvenient to water, so you may want to opt for more drought resistant plants that can thrive without much water.

In addition to the standard garden considerations, for hellstrip gardens you should also consider the possibility that they will be subjected to more foot traffic, pollution, and possibly road or sidewalk salt than gardens in other locations. It can be challenging to protect your garden from damage from all these factors, so opting for rugged plants like self-seeding flowers that will effortlessly flourish with little attention and can quickly bounce back from damage is often the best option for creating a beautiful and pollinator-friendly hellstrip garden.