Let’s talk about hell. Hell strips, that is. The Urban Dictionary has this to say on the subject of hell strips:

“Most gardeners find their “hell strip” to be that spot next to the sidewalk or the street that people’s dogs potty on and gets blasted with full sun from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the sprinkler system doesn’t quite reach.”

Hmm. That does rather sum up the problem.

Do you have something like that in front of your house? Do you long to make it prettier? Snap a picture of your hell strip and show it to us, and you could win a copy of Stephanie Cohen and Jennifer Benner’s book, The Nonstop Garden. Among the many virtues of this book is a design tailor-made for hell strips. It features tough-as-nails, hardy, colorful, drought-tolerant plants, and will beautify your strip in no time.

Here are The Rules.

1) Take a picture of your hell strip, and post it online. Send us the link in the comments. Commiserate with other commenters about the problems posed by these little strips of hell. (Or, maybe a commenter will have a brilliant solution that will revolutionize the world. You wouldn’t want to miss that.)

2) Comments will close June 30th, and shortly thereafter we will pick out the two worst offenders in the bunch. Two winners will get a copy of The Nonstop Garden. (Because that’s whose garden really needs the book, right? I suppose I should exclude purposefully uglifying your strip before you take the picture — but, well, a purposefully uglified strip could be fun too.)

3) Sorry, we can only ship to Canada and the US. Feel free to show us your hell strip from anywhere in the world, though!

Here’s to prettier hell strips!