Skip to content
no. 82
January 2026

Parking Lot Paradiso

A photograph of a man wearing a baseball cap, green hoodie, tan pants, and boots holds a white scroll in front of a short manicured bush in a parking lot. Behind him is a large McDonald’s sign on the left, and a McDonald’s building on the right.
fig. 1 Your average parking lot boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) shrub, pointlessly pruned into a tiny green ball.
© Bobby Doherty

Parking lots and fast-food drive-thrus are not typically desirable destinations for plant nerds or nature lovers like myself. As an urban forester and content creator (@Andrew_The_Arborist) focused on trees, native plants, and ecological restoration, I don’t often get excited about parking lot plants. The flora of these commercialized seas of asphalt is usually ignored, viewed as nothing more than blobs of greenery used to divide up the parking spaces.

Most of the time, that’s a pretty accurate description. The plants that are installed in parking lots and corporate landscapes are often some of the most horticulturally boring, ecologically useless vegetation available at wholesale plant nurseries: boxwoods pruned into tiny spheres, rows of yew bushes butchered within an inch of death, and hundreds of daylilies sprinkled in between. Ecologically damaging invasive plants like Callery pears, burning bushes, and barberries are popular despite their propensity to escape the parking lot and degrade adjacent natural areas.

It takes a tough plant to survive in these unusual, man made settings. The concrete and asphalt absorb warmth during the day and release it at night; when combined with a lack of greenery, these elevated temperatures create an urban heat island effect that stresses plants. The trees also usually have a limited soil volume, which makes obtaining water and nutrients more difficult. Soil quality and microbial life are generally poor, and soil compaction from foot traffic and frequent mowing are high.

While planting native oaks or milkweeds in a Walmart parking lot is not a replacement for natural woodlands or healthy meadows, it is a step in a better direction. And amid the excessive trimming, weeding, and pruning, there’s almost always a forgotten edge of the parking lot where wild plants persist, sprouting in pavement cracks by abandoned shopping carts and windblown litter. The cliché rings true: life finds a way.

 

A photograph of a man holding a white screen in a parking lot, behind a twenty-foot tree with reddish leaves at the top that fade into a bright green toward the bottom.
fig. 2 The red, glossy display of a Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) in autumn. Because of its invasiveness, the tree is now classified as a noxious weed in Pennsylvania and is illegal to sell here.

 

A photograph of a roll of white screen held by a tall metal apparatus. Before it are various shoots of tall weeds, some with yellow flowers, others with grains.
fig. 3 One of the most ecologically beneficial herbaceous plants, a native goldenrod (Solidago altissima) sprouts in a forgotten corner of the parking lot.

 

A white screen is held by a man, along with a tall metal apparatus, by the side of a road. Before the screen, a tree grows through a chain-link fence.
fig. 4 A fence tries to hold back Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) at the wild edge of the parking lot.

 

A man stands next to a large white screen, and in front of it stands the bottom-half of a large tree with orange leaves.
fig. 5 Endangered in Pennsylvania, a resilient Shumard oak (Quercus shumardii) grows on a median.

 

A man stands to the right of a white screen. In front of the screen are red rose bushes blanketed in mulch, next to a curb and parking spots.
fig. 6 While most plants are going dormant for the winter, a cultivated rose variety (Rosa sp.) puts on a showy pink display.

 

A photograph of brown pinecones weighing down the branches of a pine tree, in front of a white screen.
fig. 7 Heavy cones weigh down the branches of a Norway spruce (Picea abies) meant to provide an evergreen privacy screen.

 

A photograph of a square white screen sits behind a row of tall brownish grass with wispy grains at its edges. Behind the screen is a tall electrical pylon.
fig. 8 Ten-foot-tall invasive Miscanthus (Miscanthus sinensis) dwarfs all other vegetation in the meadow next to an indoor pickleball center.

 

A photograph of a man holding the left side of a large square screen. In front of the screen is a freshly cut tree stump. Behind the screen is a muted gray-and-beige concrete-and-brick building.
fig. 9 The fresh stump of an Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), cut down to make way for construction that will convert abandoned office buildings into housing.

 

A photograph of a white screen with a large branch of a tree in front of it. Its leaves are green at the tips, gradually turning yellow and orange as they reach the base of the branch. Behind the screen is an aluminum wall that includes a logo that begins with the letter “A” and reads “Management” below it.
fig. 10 Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) leans out into the sunlight, with boxelder maple (Acer negundo) samaras dangling overhead. These native species are some of the first to grow on land cleared by human development.