Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote:
(snippage) Our next challenge is to put in plantings on an area of the grounds that people cut through frequently -- here I think the biggest challenge will be to get people to respect the garden and not throw their trash there. I don't know if signage helps or hurts with this kind of thing.
|
IME, signage can work if it is is friendly/humorous and is accompanied by a trash barrel that is emptied regularly and is placed right along the "path of desire" (the official term for a heavily used cut-through path) so the passersby don't have to go out of their way. After all, if they are cutting through instead of going around, and also dropping trash, they probably are basically lazy.
You might also get respect (or some semblance of it) for the garden by creating an actual path (bark mulch or gravel) on the ground that is being trodden. It doesn't have to be complicated -- if the area is soil, just dig a couple of inches down and put an inch of so of coarse gravel on the bottom, then another inch of pea pebbles on top. Or use bark mulch on top of coarse sand. You'll have to refresh it periodically (gravel gets kicked out over time; mulch decomposes into soil), but a 40 lb. bag of gravel at Home Depot is less than 3 bucks and will cover a several of feet of path a couple inches deep. I've done this with some of my clients' properties and it's cheap 'n' easy, and can be very attractive if you put some plantings along it.