With a metre of snow piled in front of my house, the plants beneath it aren’t exactly top of mind. The heath and New England aster, goldenrod and milkweed are tucked away for the winter but will re-emerge in all their glory come spring. They’ve only been there for a few years now, gradually overtaking the sod that covered our yard when we moved in. We let it go wild, and wild it has gone.
Should I be worried about contravening a city bylaw limiting grass and weeds to 20 centimetres high? Maybe — if you stuck a school ruler in our garden in full bloom, you’d likely never find it again. But the regulation doesn’t seem to be heavily enforced, at least by my eye, nor is it clear on what constitutes a weed. I hope the species we’re growing, which are refuges and resources for pollinators, would be exempt.
But there are certainly some dandelions lingering among the plants — bees like them too, you know! — and you’ll definitely find clover, a great nitrogen fixer but also considered a weed by many. But enough about my garden, because I certainly don’t want to encourage a neighbour to complain and a bylaw officer to come knocking — or mowing.
Because that’s exactly what’s happening in other Ontario municipalities.
Despite the biodiversity crisis we find ourselves in as a nation — and around the world — diverse, natural gardens are being extinguished by some people’s preference for their neighbours’ lawn to be tidy and uniform.
In Burlington, the Barnes family saw their naturalized garden — which included many of the same species I have, and more — razed by the city after repeated warnings and threats of fines if they didn’t trim it back themselves.
According to the city, the Barnes’ garden didn’t warrant the title of a naturalized space that would be immune to the 20-centimetre rule (apparently this is a commonly agreed-upon height for plants), despite it being popular with bees and butterflies. Much of the city’s argument, according to recent reporting on the case by the Toronto Star, appears to rest on the perceived lack of maintenance in the Barnes’ garden.
So the city threatened a $10,000-a-day fine, on top of a flat $100,000 fee, until the plants were trimmed.
Now, the City of Burlington is taking Karen Barnes to court in March for up to $400,000 of those fines, after city crews destroyed the garden she carefully cultivated — several times.
The Barneses aren’t alone in their fight.
As the Toronto Star reported, Mississauga resident Wolf Ruck won a years-long battle earlier this month, when a judge ruled the city’s bylaw specifying grass height and weed-control requirements are unconstitutional. It also meant Ruck was not on the hook for the city’s costs after it mowed down his naturalized garden, just as Burlington did to the Barnes’ garden. The bylaw, the judge found, was an infringement upon Ruck’s right to freedom of expression. And there are several other examples of bylaws across the province restricting garden growth — and cases where residents crossed their city’s limit.
Yet, most of us don’t live under the rule of a homeowner association — a type of community organization common in the U.S., and less so in Canada, that collects dues from its members (residents in these communities don’t have an option to forgo membership) and can dictate everything from the colour you paint your house to shed size to garden aesthetics.
Here, if my next-door neighbour wants to paint their house hot pink, they can do it and I can live with it. They’re not harming anyone. So why are garden choices still not a homeowner’s alone?
Beyond the subjective matter of aesthetic preferences, native plants — and many so-called “weeds” — store planet-warming carbon dioxide, provide pollen for insects at the foundation of our food systems and require less water and maintenance than a lawn. It’s why a lot of cities, Burlington and Mississauga included, have planted their own pollinator gardens.
Cracking down on people who want to let their own garden grow naturally is a waste of time for municipal staff, and money for taxpayers. Court cases aren’t cheap and neither are staff hours.
On her fundraising page for the upcoming court case, Barnes says her family has been “targeted and harassed for daring to have a yard that looks ‘different’ from the norm.”
If aesthetics are the primary concern here, I’d point out that cities already allow (and build) unsightly infrastructure that has promised benefits beyond its appearance. For instance, the paved parking pads that are cropping up around cities. If anyone wants to argue parking pads provide a more necessary function than a naturalized garden, I’d wager you don’t need your car as much as a bee needs pollen.
So let them have it. Let people have their gardens, however they prefer them, and let nature reclaim a tiny fraction of the space it has lost to cities. I’d say we owe it that much.
