The whirring of hummingbird wings and the humming of bees are pleasant sounds to human ears; they also signify a healthy environmental habitat.
“Even a little bit of native habitat is important — even just your planting strip or part of a strip,” explains Marina, a Beaumont-Wilshire resident, who has planted a 19- by 9.5-foot parking strip segment with native plants. Her design model came from the High Line in New York City — a 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park, greenway and rail trail created on a former New York Central Railroad spur — and the book The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, by Roy Diblik, which is full of information about famous gardens.
“Diblik,” she says, “referred to this kind of design as plants that are ‘chosen and positioned to live well together with respect to their common needs and individual lifestyles.’”
To that end, Marina looked at the plant list from one of the garden plans and compared the Eastern and European species to Pacific Northwest native species (see reference below) in her planting strip. “I swapped grasses for grasses, Allium for Allium — it is a grand experiment!” she exclaims.
Now is the time to prepare a curb strip for planting. Sherrie Villmark, who has established native habitat on 70 planting strips in the Montavilla neighborhood, provides instructions for this work on her website pollinatorparkways.weebly.com. To prepare the parking strip, either cover with cardboard and mulch, or to dig, do so now while the soil is wet. Plant in November when the rains return.
Summer is for imagining and planning. We need artists in all media — including landscape design, visual arts, music, and poetry — to expand our imaginations for living surrounded by native habitat, because habitat is also art.
Reference:
portland.gov/bps/environ-planning/portland-plant-list
Gin McCollum has a food thicket she is shifting to produce food not only for a human but also for native birds and butterflies. She finds mathematical structure in neural systems and writes. She hopes for our familiar neighborhood habitat to become wild, native, healthy, and beloved.