Indeed, narrow strips of boulevard grass are generally economic and ecologic disasters if one tries to keep them growing lush lawn grass. "Good" grass requires lots of water, lots of mowing and semi-annual fertilizer, it seems. However, having anything growing there is generally better than hard surface. I'm all in favor of getting rid of grass except for where it is needed as a play surface, and have been pretty successful at removing most of it from my yard.I've about had it with trying to grow grass in my boulevards. "Real" grass doesn't flourish and the assortment of weeds I have look terrible. I'm almost at the point of dividing the common orange daylillies behind my garage just to put something other than weeds out there. (Although some would argue that those are weeds.)
So, anyone have suggestions for good, low maintenance,
salt and heat tolerant full sun plants to put out
there?
We just planted a big variety of hostas and a few coneflowers on one of our two boulevard strips. It gets some shade from the elms and lindens, which is good as hosta don't do real well in full sun.
Dayliliies work just fine. They are very tough. Purple coneflowers (echinacea purpurea) would so well there too, although they don't have nearly the ability to crowd out other plants and weeds that daylillies and hosta do which in that location is generally a desirable attribute. They are robust and drought resistant, though.
My advice would be to use an herbicide like Round-up (glycophosphate) on the area first to kill everything. Use it when it will be dry for a couple days so that it is all broken down chemically by sunlight and soil action before rain washes it into the ecosystem. It may sound environmentally unsound to use some sort of toxic chemical, but glycophosphate is pretty much harmless once it has broken down. It'll take a few weeks before everything looks completely dead, but I suspect the plants will have taken up enough to kill themselves in a day, so you can pretty much start planting new things in a couple days -- since you will want to water them immediately and frequently until they recover from the transplanting shock, but don't want to wash any herbicide into the gutter. The idea is to give your transplants as much of a head start on existing or new weeds or grass as possible. Glycophosphate works real well on grass. It will be dead. Most other things, too, so be careful that it doesn't get on anything but what you want dead.
Mulching would be a good idea, too, especially to keep weeds down with the daylillies since they won't crowd out the competitors until they get well established.
Good luck. I'm just a hack front-yard gardener, so this advice is worth every penny it cost.
Chris Johnson Fulton
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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