Streetside plantings

Many communities have spaces between the sidewalk and road. Sometime we describe them as hell-strips, sometimes just as sidewalk median plantings.

Some places have wide planting areas, others narrow ones -- all are lucky to have sidewalks to start with!

In the Vancouver neighborhood where we're currently staying (through HomeExchange), most of these strips are mowed grass, with the houses surrounded by rather formidable and lush hedges as a privacy screen.

These two, just down the road from our temporary house, stood out.

The first was rather extraordinary. Pruned, topiary-ish evergreens, both in the median and next to their fence.

The other was more to my liking: a mixed grass and wildflower border between the sidewalk and the street. Their neighbor, an absent investor, had nothing but river rock below and grasses above, in contrast. At least, they'd added a landscape of some sort.