The Hellstrip pt.1 — J. LIU THE INSTRUMENT

I’m about to ruin my front yard, or so one part of me tells myself. For decades now, a murder of barberries, golden cypresses, a lone azalea, and an euonymus have roosted along the edge of a retaining wall flanked on one side by our downslope driveway, and on the other, the walkway leading to the front door entrance of the house. For many years, I’ve watched, going to and from my house as these plants, more or less, do nothing. They do nothing for aesthetics, nothing for wildlife, nothing for me.

But that they do nothing for me is key in the dilemma of this project. No one else seems to have a problem with what currently exists there. To the eyes of my family, and any passerby's, my front yard, I am certain, looks completely normal, completely acceptable. The planting scheme is perfectly respectable- all the appropriate heights, evergreens, and flowering spectacles scattered throughout…

But, to me, all I can see is wasted space. Countless blocks of precious square footage allotted to plants only for the reason that they conform with the conventional landscaping trends so rampant in this area. The reigning priority here seems to be convenience in maintenance, a stance which, in the given circumstances of our current shaky footing with the environment, is by far too narrow of a stance to take. Too far and too few plantings used in the standard lineup one finds outside of the homes in my neighborhood do nothing to feed or shelter wildlife; and too far and too few plantings these days do anything to feed or provide refuge for the eyes. To be more succinct, the reason the space does nothing for me, is because it does nothing for anyone else.

dreams of what it could be- deschampsia + echinacea

More than ever, it’s becoming clear that wildlife is being displaced, and a great portion of the displacement deals with the preferences we have for the environment: large stretches of manicured lawns, heavy use of evergreens, planting only “clean” plants producing no flowers, no fruits, no pollen. There is, most certainly, a time and place for this sort of aesthetic. However, given our current circumstances, this is, perhaps, not the best time. While having an impact on environmental changes are seldom likely to happen in a short amount of time and on a large scale, the effort for change can at least be made at the grassroots. It behooves us to allot whatever small square footage we can, back to those small creatures doing the irreplaceable work of simply being themselves, the work that is pivotal to the delicate balance of the world we live in. And with that duty, also comes a call for a change in our thinking when it comes to what we define as the beauty of a home, or what’s referred to as “curb appeal”. Think: instead of another stretch of stiflingly uninteresting mowed grass, an interruption in that grass: a patch of blazing stars, swaying in the breeze, buzzing with bees and butterflies on the front lawn. This, I believe is the new kind of beauty we must begin to embrace if small efforts mean to blossom into larger impacts.

And so, I started on a grand plan to clear away the entire row of those shrubs in my front yard, a space I began to refer to as “The Hellstrip.” Hours upon hours went into planning: watching the sunlight move over the strip, examining the soil, planning for blooms from May to October, thinking of color, thinking of form, using as much native plants as possible, making sure they’d each at least serve as either a food source or shelter for wildlife. And after all these hours of tedious deliberation, I finally came up with a planting list:

wild bergamot (monarda fistulosa)

yellow coneflower (ratibida pinnata)

echinacea (e. purpurea, e. pallida)

lupines (lupinus perrennis)

wavy hair grass (deschampsia flexuosa)

rough blazing star (liatris aspera)

-all to be mixed in with whatever existing plants I’d decide to keep based on the beneficial functions I might discover them to provide.

And on the day (which has arrived seemingly against all odds in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis) my plants were delivered from the nursery, healthy and perky, ready to be planted- after all of this effort of planning and preparing, all the manifestos I’ve written in my head as to why my yard must change, all the tree hugging juice I’ve been drinking and doling, I suddenly balk at the task before me. The inevitable, ever hovering question finally takes hold: what if everything goes horribly wrong? what if I ruin my front yard?

It will be the eyesore of the street. The bane of all my neighbors. Another source of tension added to an already tense family.

The visibility of a front lawn never mattered, perhaps to a neighborhood, most certainly to me, as much as it seems to now. Everyone is on the street more than I’ve ever seen them. I discover neighbors I never knew existed, and likewise, I suppose, they must discover me. Up until the quarantine, whenever I worked in the front yard, it always seemed as if I lived in a ghost town- the only activity outside were the chattering birds, our outdoor cat who stalks me all through the garden, and the occasional car, shuttling spirits to and fro.

Now, my neighbors see me. They see me as they pass walking, jogging, talking, as I work in the garden, every Saturday, morning to dusk. I imagine I’ve been labelled as “the girl who gardens”. I imagine they wonder why my life is such that I’m compelled to labour so. I imagine they see me putting in all this effort for something which ultimately results in an effect that is completely invisible, if not, a total detraction to what had originally been there. (I also imagine the most likely truth is that they don’t think much about me at all.)

Once I remove these shrubs, my normal looking lawn will immediately turn to looking not normal. The ground will be mostly dirt as the perennials fill in, and to make matters worse, the perennials are very small plugs, which as pointed out by my family, and non-gardening friends whom I’ve forced to listen to my garden ramblings, resemble weeds. My house and yard will, immediately, no longer look like the other houses and yards on the street.

I tell myself many stories, most of which are unfounded, untrue, most of which contain the hidden agenda of discouraging my efforts. Fear of failure, fear of failure. The story is the same every time.

What’s the worst that can happen?

The worst is that I fail: the planting scheme is ugly, and nothing blooms. I go back to square one and either replace everything back with what I had originally taken out, or find something else that might better fit the bill.

The best is that the experiment is a beautiful success. I’m lauded as a burgeoning gardener visionaire on my street, which turns out to actually extend through my entire town, and I become crowned gardener laureate.

I highly suspect the real results will fall somewhere in the middle.

Too many plans, too many arrangements have been made for this day not to be seen through. I owe it to the energy I’ve already devoted to the dream to not not take the leap.

And with that, Hellstrip Reno 2020, here goes nothin’.

*some images not my own.