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Small Spaces / Urban Gardening

Trees and groundcover for sidewalk boxes

18 years ago

In my street, on both sides, we have "traffic calming" cement planters, about 3x3'square, in which the city planted trees about ten years ago. It's really difficult to get them replaced once something happens, and as luck would have it, the Domino's pizza delivery guy recently drove over one of mine. *sigh*

1) I need to buy and plant a tree that will stay below 20' high, and not spread too much, but also I'd like it to be strong, with a good thick trunk. Hearty in the New England climate.

2) A dog-urine resistant ground cover

Any ideas, urban gardeners?

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Comments (2)

emmakitty
18 years ago
Well, I've got no idea for trees, but for urban ground cover... a mint might be nice.. They take over pretty quickly.
stacy_nm
18 years ago
Some suggestions for trees:
tree-form service berry (early flowers, fruits, nice fall color)

flowering cherry (flowers, nice shape, pretty bark in winter)--a weeping cherry might be gorgeous!

crabapples (depending on the variety)

If you were willing to consider multi-stemmed trees, viburnums are really lovely.

You'd have to do some research to find the right-size cultivars of all of those. Hope that helps!

Here is a link that might be useful: Small trees for cities
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