Road verge

A "parkway" with street trees in Oak Park, Illinois

A road verge (also besidewalk, boulevard, city grass, devil strip, government grass, hellstrip, island strip, nature strip, neutral ground, out lawn, parking strip, parkway, planting strip, road reserve, sidewalk buffer, tree belt, tree lawn, utility strip, verge, etc.) is a narrow strip of grass or plants and sometimes also trees located between the carriageway (roadway) curb (or road surface edge or shoulder) and the boundary of a road.

The land is often public property with maintenance usually being a municipal responsibility; however some municipal authorities require that abutting property owners maintain these areas and also the footpath / sidewalks.

Benefits include visual aesthetics, increased safety and comfort of sidewalk users, protection from spray from passing vehicles, and a space for benches, bus shelters, street lights and other public amenities. It is also often part of sustainability for water conservation or the management of urban runoff and water pollution and may provide useful wildlife habitat. Snow that has been ploughed off the street in colder climates may be stored in the area.

In some countries, verges are the last location of habitats for a range of flora.

The main disadvantage of the road verge is that the right-of-way must be wider, increasing the cost of the road. In some localities a wider verge offers opportunity for later road widening, should the traffic usage of a road demand this. For this reason the footpaths are sited a significant distance from the curb.

Terminology

This term has many synonyms and dialectal differences, with some dialects and idiolects without a term for this area and instead using a circumlocution.

Terms used include:

• Berm: Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Zealand.
• Boulevard: North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin; United States Upper Midwest; Winnipeg, and western Canada; Markham, Ontario.
• Boulevard strip: U.S. Upper Midwest.
• Curb lawn: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Elyria, Ohio; Miami County, Ohio; Greenville, South Carolina.
• Curb strip: New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington
• Devil strip or devilstrip: Akron, Ohio; Northeast Ohio.
• Easement.
• Furniture zone, also planter/furniture zone or landscape/furniture zone: a term used by urban planners, indicating its suitability for "street furniture" such as utility poles and fire hydrants, as well as trees or planters.
• Grass bay: New Jersey.
• Grassplot: East Coast of the United States, Pennsylvania.
• Island strip: Long Island, New York
• Nature strip: Australia.
• Neutral ground: U.S. Gulf States.
• Park strip: Ohio.
• Parking: Illinois, Iowa, Western United States.
• Parking strip: Washington state, Oregon, much of California.
• Parkway: Greater Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast of the United States, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Florida, Texas.
• Parkway strip: Austin, Texas; Fort Collins, Colorado.
• Planter zone: SmartCode/New Urbanist terminology.
• Road allowance: Ottawa, Canada
• Road verge: Australia.
• Roadside: Australia
• Sidewalk lawn: Georgia.
• Sidewalk plot: Virginia, Maryland, Indiana, Tennessee.
• Snow shelf: Connecticut
• Street allowances: Toronto.
• Street easement.
• Street lawn: Ohio.
• Swale: South Florida.
• Terrace: U.S. Great Lakes region, Missouri.
• Tree belt: Massachusetts.
• Tree lawn or treelawn: Ohio, Indiana, New York, and elsewhere.
• Verge: England, New Zealand, Western Australia.

Sustainable urban and landscape design

Planted rain garden in the "tree lawn" zone

In urban and suburban areas, urban runoff from private and civic properties can be guided by grading and bioswales for rainwater harvesting collection and bioretention within the "tree-lawn" - parkway zone in rain gardens. This is done for reducing runoff of rain and domestic water: for their carrying waterborne pollution off-site into storm drains and sewer systems; and for the groundwater recharge of aquifers.

In some cities, such as Santa Monica, California, city code mandates for "Parkways, the area between the outside edge of the sidewalk and the inside edge of the curb which are a component of the Public Right of Way (PROW) - that the landscaping should require little or no irrigation and the area produce no runoff." For Santa Monica, another reason for this use of "tree-lawns" is to reduce current beach and Santa Monica Bay ocean pollution that is measurably higher at city outfalls. New construction and remodeling projects needing building permits require that landscape design submittals include garden design plans showing the means of compliance.

In some cities and counties, such as Portland, Oregon, street and highway departments are regrading and planting rain gardens in road verges to reduce boulevard and highway runoff. This practice can be useful in areas with either independent Storm sewers or combined storm and sanitary sewers, reducing the frequency of pollution, treatment costs, and released overflows of untreated sewage into rivers and oceans during rainstorms.

Rural roadsides

In some countries, the road verge can be a corridor of vegetation that remains after adjacent land has been cleared. Considerable effort in supporting conservation of the remnant vegetation is prevalent in Australia - where significant tracts of land are managed as part of the roadside conservation strategies by government agencies

Gallery

• 

  Ginkgo street trees in the "boulevard" area, in Riverside, Illinois

• 

  A planted garden in the "tree lawn", in Raleigh, North Carolina

• Massachusetts-devils strip.JPG

  A ratty-looking Devil Strip in suburban Greater Boston, Massachusetts. Outside of rural areas in New England, devil strips are narrow - the one pictured is 52 in from curb to sidewalk. They are usually not maintained by the municipality, but rather by the property owner, and are used primarily to provide space for utility poles.

See also

• Central reservation
• Roadside conservation
• Shoulder (road)
• Urban forestry
• Long acre A traditional term for wide grassy road verges, used by grazed by herds or flocks moving from place to place
• Category:Environmental conservation

External links

• Parkway with xeric garden photographs
• Devil Strips – term's use and lore.