Curb Appeal Sidewalk gardens add a sliver of intrigue to the landscape

It’s hard to believe something so lovely started with a backed-up sewer.

Two years ago, Xenia Rofes had a problem with the pipe leading into her Little City home, and she thought the roots of a maple were to blame. So she and her husband hired a crew to rip up the sliver of land between the curb and the sidewalk.

They never did figure out the cause of the sewer problem, but they were left with a strip of soil, the maple tree, and a few rocks.

“I had to do something,” Rofes said. “It was a question of whether I do grass or whether I do what I like.”

She did what she liked, and the result is a diminutive garden, anchored with low-growing cedars and accented with splashy gaillardia, sweet-smelling phlox and a groundcover of creeping sedum. All came from an end-of-season special at Wal-Mart, and all have survived two seasons of snowplowing.

“This gives you pleasure all winter,” Rofes said. “I have an eighth of an acre, so what am I left with?”

In neighborhoods all over Bangor, intrepid souls have expanded the scope of their landscape by cultivating the oft-neglected area between the sidewalk and the road. They face losses by plow, salt and poor soil conditions, but they plant on, undaunted.

“We don’t put anything in there that we’re too committed to because of the snowplows,” said Ashley Mullins, who has planted a shade garden beneath a towering tree on Pond Street in Bangor. “It’s a defining part of the front of the house.”

The grass wasn’t growing very well there, anyway, so Mullins tore it up and started to experiment. She tried annuals, but they didn’t get enough sunlight, and a pair of daisy-tree topiaries blew over in the wind. She settled on an understated, elegant mix of hosta and sedum, edged with mulch and accented by the home’s original granite hitching post.

“I’m not a big fan of hosta, but it seems like that’s the only thing that will grow there,” she said. “I concentrate on the back yard. This is just kind of a survival thing. Whatever happens to it happens.”

Adam Darcy has a similar attitude about the two movable raised beds he built for the curb in front of his Little City home. He figures he can pull them up in the winter so the plows don’t hit them, and he plans to plant annuals in the summer for season-long color without the demands of perennials.

“It there are problems with salt, I can turn over the soil and replace everything relatively inexpensively,” he said.

Across town on Parkview Avenue, Judy Bladen worked hard to create a cottage-style garden at the curb in front of her house. She started last year by digging up a combination of dirt, tar and fill and replacing it with rich, fertile soil. Then she laid a herringbone brick walkway by hand and planted a selection of perennials including baby’s breath, echinacea and aster.

“I have no property and I love flowers,” Bladen said. “It’s better than just having weeds, and it helps the environment.”

Bladen figures the garden is also good for the neighborhood.

“I think it brings you more into your community; it gives you something to talk about,” she said. “There’s a chain reaction. if you do something positive, everyone else will follow.”

Tips for creating your own sidewalk garden

. Check with your local code enforcement office before doing anything. In Bangor, residents should be especially conscious of visibility issues, especially at an intersection.

. Make sure your plantings don’t tumble over or creep into the sidewalk, so as to block access.

. Don’t build any permanent structures.

. Dig up the soil and add fresh topsoil and manure or compost.

. Don’t invest in specimen plants.

. Start small to see what will grow there.

. Be conscious of the height and spread of the plants you choose – don’t plant something too big for the space.