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Front Sidewalk Garden
We have a rowhome-style house (it's not attached, but it's that general style), with no front yard, just sidewalk. I've seen several homes in our town where they've added small flower beds in front of their house - they extend as far as their front stoop sticks out, and are usually bordered by bricks or something. (It would be like where the green bench is in the pic of my house below.)
Is there a name for this type of garden? I've tried searching for every combination of terms I can think of, but I can't find anything information about them or any pictures.
What I really want to find out is, how do they do this? Do they tear up the sidewalk? Or just border off the area and fill it with dirt? That seems like the easier solution, but some of the gardens I've seen aren't really that deep, which leads me to believe they're digging below the sidewalk. Has anyone done something like this or seen it done?
Thanks for your help!
Re: Front Sidewalk Garden
I found a couple pictures of what I'm talking about. Of course, what I should really do is walk around my town and take pictures of the houses and gardens that I like
)
Click to see larger:
on the left in this one:
It is a raised flower bed.
Doesn't the sidewalk belong to the city? I'm sure that would be illegal to tear out the concrete there. Most likely there wasn't any sidewalk there to begin with or they just have shallow rooted plants.
I've never created a raised flower bed over concrete but I'm guessing drainage is a problem. The taller the retaining walls the better so that you can put a layer of gravel on the bottom. It would go something like this: build retaining walls, add layer of landscaping fabric (not plastic) just to keep everything tidy, add gravel, poor in soil, and plant flowers.
Honestly it seems like a lot of work. I'd think putting some nice containers out there would be easier and less permanent.
Well yeah, obviously if I was going to tear up part of the sidewalk I'd have to get the go-ahead from my town
) We have sort of a weird relationship with sidewalks here, though, so actually the part up by my house might belong to us. As you can see in the first photo I posted, the people who lived here before us had a homemade bench bolted to it!
There are many homes in my town with this type of garden situation, so I know it's do-able. I probably should have prepped first with more local pictures so people knew what I was referring to.
A raised bed could be nice, too, but I imagine it would take a whole lot of dirt to fill something like that in. I'm sure it'd be less work than jackhammering the sidewalk, though.
I think some trough planters on the front sidewalk and some window boxes are all you need.
http://casacara.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/img_2099.jpg
http://premierecharleston.com/images/FCKUploads/Image/blog/2010_03_21_10_flowersWindowBoxesCharleston.jpg
http://brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/cambridgeflowerboxes.JPG