One homeowner and HOA president was appalled after a landscaping professional told them that they might be required to use toxic weed killers throughout their community, whether they wanted to or not.
According to a recent post in the r/NoLawns subreddit, this Raleigh, North Carolina, Redditor is also the HOA president for "a smallish town home community."
"I expressed the desire to have our landscaping company stop spraying all the biocides on our property, and he said that our city might require them to spray whether we want them to or not," they said in the post. "Is this possibly a thing? And how would I go about verifying this one way or the other?"
Members of the r/NoLawns community tend to be against herbicide use to preserve 100% turf grass lawns. Instead, they support a wide variety of low-cost, low-maintenance, eco-friendly lawn alternatives, including native plants, clover, buffalo grass, and xeriscaping.
These options save water — which is good for your wallet and the environment — and many also support pollinators, which are beneficial to wild plants, gardens, and farms.
Unfortunately, many HOAs have stood in the way of these lawn upgrades in order to keep their neighborhoods looking uniform. Sometimes, even growing a few native wildflowers means changing HOA rules.
But this time, the HOA wasn't the culprit. And according to commenters, it probably wasn't the city, either.
"As a fellow resident of Raleigh, I have never heard of any requirement to use biocides and am pretty sure there aren't," said one user. "My guess is that using chemicals is easier than the alternative."
Or, as another user put it, "Sounds like you need a new landscaping company."
"I am also in a smallish community outside of Raleigh, and this would be an absolute nightmare to hear," said a third commenter. "One side of our community has landscaping as part of their HOA dues, so I feel like they would be most at risk for mandatory spraying. It's still scary though."
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