WTF: City code edition

In designing my parking strip garden, the last thing I want is a run-in with city code enforcement.

We only recently freed ourselves from their talons after some passerby complained about our crappy old retaining wall — which we were planning to replace anyway, so no biggie. But in the process of investigating the wall, enforcers went on a quest to find other violations. Our branches were deemed too low, even though they were way higher than many neighbors' trees. A juvenile tree had died. After the new wall was installed, we were in trouble for having bare dirt on the site just a couple of weeks later (I'm just so sorry I can't make seeds germinate out of season and grow to maturity within days.)

So, friendly and polite as they were, we don't want to deal with them again.

Because my neighbors' parking strips are all over the spectrum in terms of plant height, tidiness, and non-plant cover, I figured the city wasn't that picky about parking strips.

Then I found the city's Park Strip Standards edict.

Holy shit!

No, wait. There's more.

Daaaayyyyumn.

OK, so the rules.

Trees are allowed — nay, required — one per every 30 feet. Their trunks have to be at least two inches thick. But shrubs over 36 inches are forbidden. No shrubs or plants taller than 18 inches are allowed in "sight distance areas," but "sight distance areas" are not defined. To plant any trees, you have to get a permit from the forestry people. Shrubs are not differentiated from trees. Mountain Mahogany: Is it a shrub? A tree? Who can tell?

I suppose Code Enforcement can tell. But I don't want to draw attention to myself, for God's sake! What if all these questions cause them to identify me as a target for further investigation, come out and decide my pea gravel is the wrong diameter?

Freaking law and order. Sometimes I miss the U.P. No rules. No constraints. My friend there brought her pet iguana out to dinner with us, and no one cared even when it pooped on the table.

Ah, freedom.

Searching for mystery

When I was a teacher in China, we spent a lot of time on the four learning styles: visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic. I was a strong auditory and kinesthetic learner, meh in visual and tactile.

This does not serve me well in the arty/drawy/just-picture-it process of garden design.

After making my birds-eye swirly whirly mass-space diagram for the parking strip, I got concerned. About how it would look from the ground. About how it would look in the context of the whole yard, which I just don't have time to map.  About whether I would end up throwing away good instincts and impulses just to stick to my original diagram.

So I'm going to hang on to my swirly whirly. But I'm also going to start another design looking at the site from ground level and trying to get an in-person sense of where mass and space just feel right.

The Landscaping on the New Frontier book points to research by the University of Michigan's Stephen and Rachel Kaplan, who identify four elements that make a place feel right. They are:

• Mystery
• Legibility
• Complexity
• Cohesion 

The one I understand best is mystery -- basically, that the landscape should direct your attention to places you can't see or experience yet. Visual pathways make the viewer wonder about obscured views they lead to.

This makes more sense to me than my swirly whirly mass-space diagram. I can't envision the obscured views from that birds-eye drawing. My skills of spacial reasoning are far from intuitive.

But I can imagine experiences pretty well.

Time to get kinesthetic. Time to imagine I'm one of the many pedestrians on my street, seeing my parking strip for the first time.

Time to go for a walk.

Like I said, the parking strip is LOOONG. For scale, here is the entire length with Dragon at the end.



Dragon's end is the one I'll be starting with. There is rabbitbush, which I intend to keep.



Here's my canvas.



Aaaand from the other side.



I kind of feel like this would be a decent mysterious path:



So how about a larger shrub around here to hide it?



Now, which shrub to choose ...

...??

It's a mystery. I'll think about that later.

Welcome relief

I'm gonna do it.

No, really. It will happen. Stars will collide, mountains will crumble, seas will rise and the unthinkable will occur right here in Salt Lake City.

I'm going to make a garden design ...

... AND STICK TO IT.

After five years of meticulously measuring and mapping garden sites, obsessively researching plants and sketching shade projections using actual math, only to find none of my selections available at any nurseries and thus being forced to buy whatever hodgepodge of scraggly crap happens to be on sale lest my naked-dirt yard become a target for the insufferable narks who frequent the pedestrian route on my street for no higher purpose than to rat decent people out to the City Code Enforcement Office,

(breathe)

I am making a usable design for my hellstrip.

No expense will be spared. If I have to order all of my plants on the stupid Internet and pay a bajillion dollars in shipping, so be it. If I have to halt planting in mid-April because some bunchgrass I planned to use inexplicably goes out of stock everywhere, FINE. I'll throw down mulch to satisfy City Code Lady and spend the summer re-drawing the damn plan.

I will not allow one impulse purchase to sully my dreams. I will not substitute some marginally-hardy, water-sucking piece of junk just so I can flirt with the sales guys at a garden center that keeps one sad table of overpriced natives around for the die-hard greenies. Take your foxglove and shove it. I'm sticking to the plan, Stan.

That means I gotta make my plan.

I am taking my design instruction from the indispensable Landscaping on the New Frontier: Waterwise Design for the Intermountain West. They suggest making a design for the whole property, which probably is wise, but there's no freaking way. My biggest mistake as a gardener has been biting off more than I can chew. Yeah, yeah, it's *just* a parking strip. But this sumbitch is 92 feet long.  So I'm sticking to the parking strip and guestimating the yard for reference.



Now that I've drawn in all the pre-existing plants (and a boulder), the book said I should make some swirly whirlies to represent tall places and short places.

Well, God. I don't know. In the book, they just look like pretty line drawings. Are we supposed to assume a pretty line drawing from above will look pretty from the ground? I dunno.

I guess I like paisley?




Ummm ... dark parts are short and lighter parts are taller ... I guess??? I'm not sure it gives me a feel for the highs and lows of everything. But the sample pictures in the book don't give me a distinct sense of relief either. Which parts are tall? I just see blobs.

Well, OK. At least I have a start. Oops. I cut my picture 10 feet short. Try again tomorrow.