but I think you're in Minnesota and I grew up in Wisconsin, so it's maybe a regional thing.

In my home state, California, we called them parkways.

Dividing the two (or more) lanes. That worked except in my neighborhood there was Westover Boulevard that did not have that dividing strip. Our neighborhood had no sidewalks so everyone just mowed to the edge of the street in front of their house. And most of the streets that should have been called "boulevards" are named "avenues" as a kid it was confusing and it still is!

in fact, it amuses us that in our town, there is a street called XX Boulevard...but it isn't one. It's just a two lane road.

But in the upper midwest a "boulevard strip" refers to the grass between the street and the sidewalk.

noun

1. a broad avenue in a city, usually having areas at the sides or center for trees, grass, or flowers.

2. Also called boulevard strip. Upper Midwest. a strip of lawn between a sidewalk and the curb.

The dogs think we treasure them, I believe.

I have no other term for it, LOL.

Central Wisconsin. BTW-have you taken this test? Quite neat.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html

and others do.

I went to Madison in the early 90's and never heard of the terrace. I feel like i missed out! There was often some cool stuff left out on the terrace when the students moved out, though.

Southern Australia.

Thank goodness, otherwise it would be a bit much to mow.

responsible for the lawn or other plantings. A few of our neighbors have planted flower gardens out there. Very nice. I just mow the weeds and call it a lawn. Over the past couple of years, though, creeping charlie has taken over about half of the area and has choked out the grass. I don't have to mow that part. I'm hoping it gobbles up the rest, too. It's pretty.

I have lived in NY, PA and CA and that seems to be the thing most people call it and understand what you mean when you say it.

to make her call the association "the neighborhood Nazis."

There were sidewalk medians (grassy area and sometimes rocks) and the median between the road lanes (sometimes grassy, most times not)

Downtown Atlanta - where I lived from birth until 12.

of the street. Interesting.

Depending on the context needed.

It's interesting to see how many names such a humble thing has.

and how the hodge-podge of different people all blended together.

I learned to skateboard back in the day they were Neanderthal boards with clay wheels.

I decided to go down a sloping hill in Tacoma Wa and got up waaay to much speed.

I realized this and as they have no brakes my only option was to aim between parked cars and hit the grass.

I did, then rolled flailing across the sidewalk and halfway up the steep lawn in front of a house.

Nothing on but shorts n shoes, the flesh I lost that day was beyond bandaids.

That strip of grass saved my ass.

Never made that same mistake again.

South Texas. Nothing can grow there. Not reasonable to irrigate.

Were popular with builders in the 60s.

I think they were originally used to plant trees to shade sidewalks, but trees don't thrive in those small strips.

I'm not sure if my spelling is correct though. Where we live it's considered part of the street, but the homeowner is responsible for its upkeep. Anything that you plant there can be torn up by the city or a utility company if needed. They can widen the street and pave it over too, but that usually never happens unless you live along a very busy street. Many people use it as an extra parking space.

http://www.miamidade.gov/publicworks/library/brochures/save-our-swales-english.pdf

Dictionary def..
SWALE:
noun
a low or hollow place, especially a marshy depression between ridges.

m

The swale. It's the part of the yard you water, weed and mow but don't own.

I'm in Akron. It is a Devilstrip here.

My boss grew up in Niles I'll see if he called them the same thing.

Devilstrip and Treelawns.

I lived in Warren for four years and don't remember what they were called there. But here in Akron we call them devil strips! Nice to see someone here from good old Warren!

I've called it curb strip.

for the one in front of my house.

BTW. they are great areas to metal detect. I pulled a bunch of Wheat backed pennies and a few silver dimes out of the easement in front of my house.

People getting in and out of their cars lose things there quite often.

Other areas have given up rings and jewelry.

I'll have to try a metal detector. My usual metal detector (the lawn mower) finds beer cans, plastic bottles, other treasures.

I noticed that name in the list. Road salt plays the devil with keeping a lawn growing in ours in Minnesota.

I believe the Devil strip in the 1800s was the small piece of land in between trolly car tracks that were like 2 or 3 feet wide. A dangerous place to be for someone if two cars were passing each other but built just wide enough you wouldn't get smooshed.

Akron also had street cars like that so I assume they used the term here. It wasn't until the 1900s that it sort of morphed into the sidewalk-street piece of land. It has stuck here. Matter of fact you will see streets signs all over saying NO PARK near Devilstrip.

It's a "verge".

where I live now (sw Louisiana) we grew so fast that most residential areas don’t have sidewalks so we don’t need such a word.

Too bad. Where do the kids skate? When I was a kid, we lived on the old clamp-on, metal-wheeled roller skates in the summer. We could skate to anywhere in town on the sidewalks, and did.

My wife, who grew up in Montana and Washington, calls it a “boulevard.”

By now, each of us knows what the other is talking about.

I've always called it a parkway.

Now I will have to ask others I know lol!

Words are fun!

And why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway???
m

I mean, I don't own the thing, but I gotta mow it and trim whatever trees happen to grow on it?

In fact, they get all bent out of shape if you mess with them. We lost a big branch from our flowering crab a week ago, due to wind. Yesterday, the St. Paul Forestry Department stopped by and fed it into the chipper, which blew it all into a covered dump truck. They've been going up and down the streets doing that since the windstorm. If you're quick, you can even carry a few other branches from your yard out, and the workers will chip those up for you, too. But, you have to be quick.

Doesn't take care of the roads. Doesn't take care of overgrowth near powerlines. Doesn't plow when it snows. Doesn't salt when there's ice. Doesn't take care of that little strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. I am to believe these sorts of things are "too expensive", though I am curious as to where my taxes are going if not to public service.

But, hey. This is Michigan.

St. Paul is quite civilized, really. In Mid-April, we got 16-18" of snow one day. Two days later, every street was cleared, as were almost all residential driveways and sidewalks. The city and the residents get right on it, as soon as the snowfall stops. It's really remarkable, I think. We're never stuck in our homes for more than a day, really, regardless of the amount of snow.

One of the first things I bought when my wife and I moved here was a big-assed snowblower. It lasted for 10 years, after which I bought another one. Only about half of the homeowners in my neighborhood have one, so those of us who do deal with our neighbor's mess, too. The machine does most of the work, so even a 72 year old geezer like me can take care of my driveway and walks, along with one neighbor's. A couple of hours, and we're all ready to go again.

Snow stopped Sunday night, I left town Monday noon. A little tough getting out of the neighborhood, but once on the street for the 2 miles to 94 it was good to go. 94E was clear, even the shoulders were groomed and clear. Truely amazing 'cause that was a lot of snow. Beautiful, though.

Parkway. I grew up in a big exurb about 40 miles south of downtown Chicago. (Exactly 45.5 miles to Wrigley Field.)

I've been hearing parkway since i was a little kid.

That said, i live in a small town even farther south. I don't know what they call them in my neighborhood, because 2/3rds of the houses don't have them. Or sidewalks.

Until that moment, I had no idea it had a name.

In Georgia we call it "nuisance", particularly if you're having to mow it.

You nailed it.

At least in the NC Piedmont.

Same is true for the southwest of Germany where I grew up, and the Ruhr area (west) where I went to university.

So I don't know if those lawn strips exist in Germany, or if they have a special name.

Sidewalks usually just look like this: http://www.unser-bogenhausen.de/2017/04/rennbahnstrasse-radler-auf-den-gehweg/ Sometimes the sidewalk looks a little nicer, with concrete tiles or some trees.

Kleinegrünengraßestripstraße or something comparably unwieldy. Although I still don't understand why the town of Ausfahrt has, like, dozens of exits on the autobahn.

Sidewalks are less commonly installed today here in the USA. Many suburban developments don't have them. That probably reflects our culture, which seems to have abandoned walking in neighborhoods.

Where I live, on the edge of my city, residential areas still have them, and they do get used, mostly by children and dog-walkers. I'm in the latter group. Fortunately, walking the dogs lets my wife and I meet the neighborhood children, who are attracted by our friendly dogs.

Another thing that has disappeared is the alley, a narrow utility roadway behind residential homes. Those seem to have died out altogether in new developments. There is not one behind my property, but they exist in older residential areas nearby. I grew up with alleys, though, which were also a place where children could walk safely.

We don't have a sidewalk now, and in another house our sidewalk abutted the street, but in our first house we called that area a parking strip.

In Portland it’s yours to maintain in front of your house. You can’t easily replace (or take down) trees on your park strip. Even if the roots of the trees are starting to break your sidewalk (which you also have to maintain... )

Anyway, I live on the outskirts. I no longer have a park strip. I have a hedge.

The city will come and replace the dead tree. Just do it at night.

I love some of the names given here.

I'm in love with words.

Here's a cute survey to go along with this thread

https://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_60.html

That is the term I used to give my dog to use that side instead of the actual lawn. Yes, I did clean it up but there is something about standing there while your dog takes a crap on someones lawn so I had him crap on the cities property.

We're very careful to clean up afterwards though, in any case. I hate finding dog poop in my front yard. Backyard? That's the dogs' area.

a term as sadly unaspiring and utilitarian as they tend to be. I just found out parkway is City of LA lingo and that several other terms are used by other Cal communities.

Since I'm also rather hardnosed about accuracy in language, as well as resistant to forced conformity, terms incorporating "lawn" don't appeal. As it happens, I've never had a curb strip of "my own," but in the past I did enthusiastically help a couple of friends extend their gardens' shrubs, trees and flowers out to the curbs so that the sidewalks became garden paths.

The word parkway has a prettier residential connotation and makes sense, but it has a more common use of a beautiful or landscaped highway or avenue. That leads to its most common use as a puffed-up street name, like Windsor Parkway as the entry road to a middle class Windsor Pointe subdivision. But this one has potential "curb strip" doesn't. If the nation cared to unite behind it I'd try to overcome my aversion to all the Country Club Manor Parkways and join in.

"rightaway."

Because that's what the government has. They can tear it up, and all they have to do is replant the grass. They can cut down trees too. Utilities often are under there.

"eyedear." Honest, I have seen these in my work, when I still worked.

Spouse works at court house if Florida helping people getting an "order of protection", sometimes referred to as a "domestic violence injunction". They've come down and asked for help getting a "conjunction".

However, it's officially called a Public Right of Way.

an advancing incline (or decline, depending which side of the road you live on)
and many, many people who live on the flat parts of town jog up and down this
road all times of the day and night.

Since many of the smaller, older homes in this part of town are being bought up and flipped, I
guess the piece of land in front of my hedge would be called: that part of the setback.

Tikki

I've never heard a name for it no matter where I lived. All in the south, from Florida to Maryland and out to Texas and several states in between.

I've heard most all the names mentioned up-thread but never as that part of my yard. To me, a boulevard is simply a city street. I generally think of them as wider than a regular street and they might have a tree-lined median in the middle but I don't think they have to. A berm is a raised patch of land to hold something in or out. A parkway is another street.

That’s what we always call it.

I had never heard that word until I went to work for the county.

I could see how that area could be used that way in Florida, where elevation changes are small. I once made a long swale in the yard of mY CA home to move rain water over 50 feet to prevent flooding. It worked great and you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it.

In the county these swales are often sloped inward so you have a gentle arch going downward. Since we get a lot of rain in late spring through the summer months, they often collect excess water and slowly drain it away.

Drainpipe poking out here and there...water ponding....mosquitoes breeding...they just called it the "slough"

but that may just have been a function of being rootless white trash.

...plowed onto it from last winter's snow."

California.

The city has control over it, which I don't think is fair. They will trim or cut down trees in the parking with or without your agreement. If they need to "get into" the utilities, they will do so without warning, but usually do a good job of reseeding. I always found it interesting that you have no control over your parking, but have to pay half the price to put in a curb.

But my better helf szys it is a parkway. Both natives of and residents of Springfield, MO

I don't know what it's called.
There might not be an official name.
Maybe we make up something short and self-descriptive.

And maintaining it is a real pain-in-the-ass at times.

and set out their trash on garbage day. But I’m talking about Michigan in the old old days when I grew up. We just called it a yard.

so it's a bit surprising it's not more common in the USA. I'm also surprised that only one person has so far mentioned "shoulder", which is what a "UK to US" reference work suggests, as well as the oxymoronic "side median".

"Verge" in the general sense of "edge" dates back to 1459, and the letters of the Paston family, a valuable source for medieval English and general life then. I found out a couple of years ago I'm a direct descendant of the family.