by Lynne Patenaude, with input from WPP members and City staff
PRINTABLE BROCHURE (PDF) created by Lesley Mather of @jeledesign
You can now plant right up to the curb in front of your house! In 2023 the City of Ottawa’s Use and Care of Roads By-law 2003-498 was updated to permit residents to plant on the land that abuts your property, adjacent to the street. This land, known as the right of way (ROW) or boulevard, is owned by the City but cared for by the resident (see Section 5A in the bylaw for details and the summary on the website).
This ROW space between the sidewalk and the road is planted with Lance-leaved Coreopsis, Black-eyed Susan, Butterfly Weed, Beebalm, and Swamp Milkweed. Photo by Laura Vargas.
How deep is the ROW?
Check how deep the City’s ROW is by entering your address on the City’s GeoOttawa map. The ROW may be the first 2-3 m from the curb, which in older areas may be most of the front yard.
What do you need to know?
The City now allows you to install “soft landscaping,” which means plant-based material, on ROWs in residential neighbourhoods. You are not allowed to use bricks, pavers, rocks, stones, concrete, tiles, or wood (including raised beds).
To prevent damage to tree roots and maintain access to infrastructure, the City has set the following limits or “set-backs.” This means you can’t plant directly beside these objects and must maintain a minimum distance, as highlighted in the following table.
| Item | Planting distance* | |
| Municipal tree | 1 m |  |
| Catch basin & manhole | 1.5 m | |
| Fire hydrant | 1.5 m from side and back, 3 m from front |  |
| Hydro transformer box* | 1.5 m from side and back, 3 m from front |  |
| Other infrastructure (e.g. light standard, hydro pole) | 1 m |  |
| Bus stops* | 5–25 m |
*Please refer to the City’s summary page for details. Diagrams from City’s website.
Why plant in the ROW?
Our cities need more green spaces that add beauty and biodiversity. Planting within the ROW can create connected corridors of habitat for pollinators and make our ecosystem more resilient. Replacing turf-grass with plants can help minimize flooding, restore groundwater, provide cooler areas for walking, and help our planet stay cool.
What can you plant?
“Soft landscaping” includes flowers, grasses, shrubs and plant-based mulch. Plants must be one m or less in height, and 75 cm or less in height in the visibility triangle at a street corner.
We encourage you to use plants that are locally native because they will best support the butterflies, bees, and birds that evolved with these plants. Ornamental plants that are not invasive are also permitted.
Which plants are not allowed?
Residents may not plant trees in the ROW. If you would like a tree (there are many reasons you should), please contact the City’s Trees in Trust program.
At present, the City does not allow plants for consumption, such as vegetables and herbs. This will be reviewed in 2024.
The bylaw lists some specific invasive plants that are not permitted in the ROW, as well as other regulated noxious weeds and invasive plants. This includes many plants that may still be sold at nurseries:
Invasive ground covers
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Invasive shrubs and grasses
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The by-law also restricts other invasive plants and weeds. Some that may be commonly found in and near gardens:
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How to get started
- Contact Ontario One Call to locate underground wires and infrastructure so you know where to dig.
- Use hand tools only. No machinery is permitted.
Suggestions for native plants that meet the height restriction are found below, listed by bloom time, from spring to fall. To best help our pollinators, try to choose flowers so you have blooms in all three seasons.
Native flowers and grasses that are drought and salt tolerant, and so work well close to the road
- Prairie Smoke
- Lance-leaved Coreopsis
- Butterfly Milkweed
- Hoary Vervain
- Nodding Onion
- Spotted Beebalm
- Pearly Everlasting
- Black-eyed Susan
- Virginia Mountain Mint
- Upland White Goldenrod
- Sky Blue Aster
- Heath Aster
- Grey Goldenrod
- Sideoats Grama (grass)
- Little Bluestem (grass)
Native flowers/grasses for sun or part-shade
- Golden Alexander
- Red Columbine
- Downy Wood Mint
- Wild Bergamot
- Anise Hyssop
- Great Blue Lobelia
- June Grass
- Prairie Dropseed (grass)
Native plants for shade
- Bowman’s Root
- Wild Strawberry
- Hairy Wood Mint
- White Snakeroot
- Large-leaved Aster
- Calico Aster
- Heart-leaved Aster
- Blue-stemmed Goldenrod
- Zigzag Goldenrod
- Bottlebrush Grass
Native shrubs
- Northern Bush Honeysuckle
- New Jersey Tea
- Fragrant Sumac
- Pot of Gold/Kalm’s St. John’s Wort
- Leadplant
- Shrubby Cinquefoil
Find native plants and seeds
Local nurseries that specialize in native plants:
- A Cultivated Art
- Solidago Farm
- Naturaide
- Ferguson Forest Tree Nursery
- Beaux Arbres aka Ottawa Valley Native Plants
Other nurseries like Trinkets & Thyme, Stoneridge Gardens, Ritchie Feed & Seed, Connaught Nursery and Peter Knippel are carrying more native plants every year. The Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library gives away free seeds and seedlings of many of these species, donated by local gardeners.
For more information
- Wild Pollinator Partners
- Fletcher Wildlife Garden
- Ottawa Wildflower Seed Library
- For Our Kids
- Ecology Ottawa
- Ottawa-South Eco-action Network
This is a plain-language summary drafted by Wild Pollinator Partners. Please consult Bylaw 2003-498 for the full legal text and the City’s official summary.
Revised: March 2024
I’m planning to do some landscaping in the front of my house, I live on the pair numbers address on Mikinak Road. There is no side walk on our side of the street. In front of my property there is a 10 feet wide bike path with a 12 inch red interlock border on each side. Followed by 8 feet of greenery and then the curb and the road. Like some of neighbors, I’m planning to do a rock garden with water features on my front lawn. It will be all River wash gravel 1 to 2 inches in size. I want this to be maintenance free, so no more grass. So the river wash gravel will go up to the red interlock border. Some neighbors did something like that and it’s very nice. I just want to make sure that it is OK by the City bylaws. It’s a company that will take care of everything.
Hi Paul, I did a little research, and it looks like loose gravels/river-rocks are not allowed in the ROW by bylaw (see the FAQ about riverstones, etc at the link here.
River stone can also be a bit problematic from an environmental perspective, as it does little/nothing for the ecosystem either below or above ground. In my experience, river stones can also become a lot of work after a few years, because tiny particles of organic matter and seeds will inevitably find their way in amongst the rocks, allowing plants to grow – and weeds are very noticeable against a backdrop of stones.
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You are right, though, that lawns can be a hassle and, while they provide a bit more to the ecosystem than rocks, their usefulness to wildlife is limited. Here are a few suggestions for alternative options you might want to explore.
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Keep your grass, but don’t worry about maintaining the “perfect suburban lawn.” If you don’t water it in droughts, it’ll go dormant and typically will bounce back when the whether changes. While the dormancy looks ugly to our modern suburban aesthetics, it can benefit you because it doesn’t constantly grow, and therefore saves you from needing to mow it so often. From an environmental standpoint, it also reduces water consumption (and electricity/fuel consumption for the mower). Don’t worry about fertilizing and over-seeding, and don’t worry so much about weeding, either. Invasive species or noxious weeds should be delt with, but some “weeds” are actually fairly sturdy natives that have managed against all odds to survive in our lawns. Violets, for example, can survive in your lawn, while also supporting native bees and the caterpillars of fritillary butterflies. As a bonus, they might stay green in a drought and don’t grow so high that you worry about looking unkempt….which brings me to option 2…
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Replace your lawn with alternative ground-covers. In terms of non-natives, wholly thyme makes a nice, uniform, low-traffic creeping mat that is quite socially acceptable to suburban tastes. It’s drought tolerant and naturally as short as a putting-green. It may require more attention to weeding (tall weeds are noticeable for their height), but it can also do a decent job smothering many weed seeds (in my experience using it between raised veggie beds). If you’re feeling a touch more adventurous, use low-growing native plants and ground-covers! Pussytoes, and prairie smoke come to my mind, but also wild strawberries, violets, and poverty oat grass (a short, native clumping grass), etc. If you specifically need something that can take more foot traffic, you may wish to watch this video on native lawn alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIglO4QOWQ. (While you may or may not feel the need to mow the plants in the video, they won’t require the babying that turf-grass often demands – watering, fertilizing, overseeding, etc etc.). If you mix a few types of plants together, you’ll benefit wildlife with a more biodiverse landscape, and it may require less weeding, as weeds can blend into the mosaic of ground-covers.
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Another option is to put in a garden. I realize that gardens can sound daunting to the uninitiated, but they don’t have to be. When installed with the right plants and a thick layer of mulch, many gardens require quite a bit less work than a lawn. Water the plants the first month/year to get them established (depending on weather and the size of the plants you’re starting with), cut any taller plants back to 1-1.5 feet in the Fall and drop the cuttings in place to contribute to the mulch layer, and come to weed out invasives for an hour or two a few times a year. Weeding can be a challenge whether in lawns or gardens, but unless you live next to an area overgrown with invasives, a good layer of mulch and a strong set of plants can do wonders for weed control. I recommend planting close together (often as close as 1′ spacing), so that the mature plants are touching – this will reduce/eliminate your need to add mulch in the future. Ontario Nature has lists of plants that have proven to be well-adapted to the sometimes harsh conditions of ROW gardens (https://www.inournature.ca/boulevard-gardens). If you want your garden to resemble those most often seen in suburban yards, I recommend looking for plants that are labelled as “non-aggressive” and or “clump-forming,” as these are more likely to stay in their place and “behave.”
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Lastly, you might consider a low-growing meadow garden, with clumping grasses and flowers (if possible, using native grasses and flowers). These types are gardens have numerous environmental benefits both above and below the soil. They also reduce the need to worry about plants that don’t “behave.” A degree of spontaneity is expected in this type of design, so if you happen to choose a flower that self-seeds itself around the garden, or slowly grows over towards an area that better suits its soil/light preferences, rather than running for a spade to reset the picture, you can just smile and nod knowingly and say “Yes, it is taking on a life of its own – just as I planned.” These gardens are only starting to gain traction in our neighborhoods, but naturalistic planting style has become very popular with high-end garden designers like Piet Ouldolf and features prominently in big city tourist gardens like Chicago’s Laurie Garden and the NY Highline….so if you neighbors look askance at your garden, you can smugly tell them “It’s the new wave of garden design, inspired by the big beautiful tourist attractions in Chicago and New York City. All the best designers are doing it.”
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I realize that is a lot of information to take in. If it feels daunting, start small. Remove a small patch of grass and try out an alternative for a couple of years (you’ll need to give plants time to establish before you judge them). Or go all in! Whatever you decide, enjoy it. (Oh, and a water feature is a lovely idea, but unfortunately would count as hard-scaping on the ROW. Perhaps you could fit one in on the part of your property that is not in the ROW?)
If you put Mikinak Rd into GeoOttawa at the link above, almost the whole front yard in that block is within the City of Ottawa’s right-of-way or ROW. According to the new rules, we aren’t supposed to landscape with anything rock or gravel in the city’s ROW, only organic mulches or plant material. Would recommend that you seek a locate from the city to confirm the ROW boundary (the city will provide measurement to the city’s water shut-off valve, which is what defines the ROW in our neighbourhood in Alta Vista, and I assume elsewhere).
The City is also beginning to look at allowing food to be grown in containers in the RoW. Watch for more information in the near future.