Yah, holy cr#p, zone 2b - I'm not even going to try to talk specific plants! I too was thinking that deciduous shrubs would be your best option, and then you could put perennials under them. But conceptually, we have easements like this in my whole neighbourhood. I think a key question is, what does the city actually do with this property? And on that basis, what are your options? Our house is fairly far forward so our yard without the easement is tiny, plus there are all the disadvantages you mentioned of maintaining the space outside a fence (and our neighbourhood offers worse debris than dog poop). Plus no one has done anything with the easement in 100 years, so all the compromises POs have made could be seen as wasted! So, we built our fence extending out over the easement (kind of a hexagonal arrangement that my husband came up with). We did this, and now garden there, with the understanding that the city could come by any day and bulldoze its way through the whole thing to, say, widen the road. In the interim, and that's been 20 years, we get a larger private yard. The fence has paid for itself in the value we get from it, and the city is welcome to come by and take it out any time :-) Another option I've seen is that people have their proper fence separating off their property, and then another, sometimes smaller, fence boxing off the easement from their yard and the sidewalk, with a little gate that they use to go in and maintain it. In other words, so it's city property. If it's yours to maintain, do what you have to do to make this manageable and to make the space a pleasure for you. When the city needs it, they'll come for it no matter what you do. KarinL

you are going to have a problem.. between the slope of the outward bed soil .. and the grass ... you ought to consider a retaining wall of about 3 bricks .... that accomplishes a number of things.. but the prime two will be.. leveling the soil level for watering ... but also.. keeping the lawnmower and weedwhip away from the garden .... now.. if you are willing to do that.. then i suggest you at least double the width ... even tripling it .... first.. so you can have at least a foot or two of bare mulch.. to widen the walkway.. for snow.. and drunken guests.. lol ... then also have a patch of mulch on the retaining wall side ... then you plant things towards the middle of the bed ... its all very neat .. first pic below to give you an idea of what i am talking about ... this will also lend structure to the front of the house .... second pic below.. you can see that the land sloped severely away from my house .... by adding the wall ... it lends solidity to the landscape ... it will also insure.. in the ensuing years.. that your sidewalks soil is not undercut and washed away.. which is why i had to do it for the cement patio pad ... a month after it was poured.. a torrential downpour nearly washed it away ... undercutting about 2 feet of the north side ... i was near apoplectic ... [my head was ready to explode] is putting the wall in.. w/in your ability??? now.. after all the hardscaping .. you will be ready to plant something.. lol ... your thoughts??? other than you dont have a budget to live your outdoor dreams ... i would rather you think of a 2 or 3 year plan ... of how to do it right.. rather than slapping some plants in.. and then 3 years down the line ... wondering why it all failed.. in the alternative.. go buy some mums in late august .. and slap them in there for a fall bloom show.. and be done with it ... and then try to figure out how to water them on a slope ... good luck.. must be exciting to have a new house. .. and sidewalk .... ken

Wow, that's a big one. Did you buy one locally? I don't think I've ever seen it anywhere around here. It would be interesting to see how it can handle your high pH water. I think the best way to buffer that is mulch with compost underneath it. The wider, the better. Actually, I would think switching to organic program will help deal with that type of situation better all over your property. It would gradually increase organic matter in the soil helping buffer salt better and so many other benefits. For example, a soil with 5% organic matter can hold almost 200 pounds of water in every 100 pounds of dry soil. A similar soil with only 1% organic matter can hold only 30 pounds of water in the same soil meaning that you don't have to water as often. You just rely on the rainfall most years. Over time, it will turn your sticky clay topsoil into crumbly soft topsoil that is easy to work with.

I assume your house is on the right. Right? The most common form of zero lot line is where the edge of the house is on the lot line and your lot goes around the other 3 sides. Each home is set up this way. Looking at the area shown in your pic, it looks like the the home on the left is the one on the lot line (glass block window is a dead giveaway) and the space between the two homes belongs to the home on the right where the a/c compressor is hooked up:) A better way to tell is to look at your survey that you received at closing when you purchased the home. The boundary lines will be clearly marked on the survey. An adequate way to tell is to look at your county property appraisers website where the lot lines are sometimes shown on the aerials. If you are the house on the left, then you probably can't do anything to that side yard since it's not your yard. If you are the house on the right then consider the rocks but install a drain and large enough slabs for the walkway so you can retrieve your lawn mower without difficulty. You will need a professional landscape designer (not the guys that just do maintenance) to get the drainage right. In this insp pic the landscape designer goes into a little detail about the drainage they used for this posted project - click through to see more details