[fusebox7]

We have a few trees in our small (3-4 ft wide) "parking strip" (the area between the sidewalk and the street). There are quite a bit of surface roots that extend a few feet outside of the current mulch rings. Grass won't grow here so it's just a bare spot with sprawling feeder roots.

What I am looking for advice on is:
- should I extend the mulch rings outward to cover the roots?
- if "yes" to the above, how should the mulch "rings" be shaped? (since the parking strip is so narrow, they can't be round anymore if they are made wider)
- anything else to plant/landscape here since the rest of our parking strip is pretty healthy KBG? Meaning, instead of doing the larger mulch rings, is there ground cover that will do well in these areas where the roots won't let grass establish? Full sun and irrigated.

Here's a couple pictures of one of the areas:

Thanks!

 

[g-man]

I have a similar strip width with maples (hoa). I know in the future the roots will be a problem with the sidewalk. I went with a square approach to the mulch matching the drip line. They are in the property line, so did the bed 3-4inch deep towards my house to prevent the roots from developing too much towards my side.

 

[fusebox7]

I thought about the square shape but what did you do where the mulch meets the concrete? I am concerned about mulch getting in the street and on the sidewalks. Do you have pictures of what you have? Thx!

 

[g-man]

I took pictures today. I can't upload them. Chrome Android crashes when I try to select the image.

 

[g-man]

Chrome 66 has a bug. It is in stable, beta and Dev. It depends on the version of Android running. Installed Firefox.

So the mulch stays there. I tried to clean it up and spread the old mulch around. I need to add new mulch.

 

[fusebox7]

@g-man thanks for this. I haven't figured out a better way to get the pics on here other than doing it from my computer. I have a Pixel mainly for the sole purpose of taking pictures of the family and never running out of storage on Google Photos (auto-upload). So, I just grab them from there on my desktop browser...

Anyways - I like the look of that. I can't believe how difficult it's been trying to find pictures of this online. I'll see if I can pull it off. I need to do something soon because I looked this weekend and the roots are well beyond the canopy right now so I'm looking at a good 12-15 foot spread. Not sure a mulch bed that wide will look great. Hmm...