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Homeowner desperate to escape town ordinance's strict surveillance of city's lawns: 'They showed up with a ruler'

"We went to the city hall yesterday after our third ordinance notice."

"We went to the city hall yesterday after our third ordinance notice."

Photo Credit: iStock

Everyone knows there are upsides and downsides to homeownership. But we don't often consider that the local municipality may come knocking on your door to regulate how long the grass can be. 

A Reddit user found this out the hard way when they started getting violation notices from the local police. "We went to the city hall yesterday after our third ordinance notice and asked them to come tell us what they wanted from us. They showed up with a ruler to prove that the grass in the front yard was longer than 6 inches."

In addition to being told the grass was too long, this person came home one day to find that two of their fruit trees had been cut down without permission. "In the spring, someone … showed up and chopped down two volunteer mulberry trees in my yard. … It was just starting to produce mulberries. I'm still upset about that one."

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Unfortunately, stories like this are all too common with towns, landlords, and homeowners associations causing problems for people who want to make eco-friendly choices. Rethinking traditional grass lawns can help support your local ecosystem with native plants, and it will save you money on your water bill. Native plants are well adapted to your local ecosystem and thus often need less maintenance.

In addition to saving you money, natural lawn options may save you time on chores like mowing and weeding.

This homeowner has been battling their local municipality, but some folks have gone toe to toe with their local HOA. Regulating bodies often opt for the path of least resistance or sometimes the loudest voice at the town hall. This can make it harder to install things like solar panels and even specialized electric vehicle ports.

Watch now: How bad is a gas stove for your home's indoor air quality?

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Luckily, folks on Reddit were very supportive of this gardener's efforts and had plenty of ideas for how they could fight back.

"It's a time and effort reinvestment, but you could remove all of the grass and reseed with clover and wildflowers and the like," suggested one person.

Someone else told them to keep good documentation: "Ask them to define lawn. Ask them exactly how this height is determined. Ask for the county ordinance cited. Send these questions to EVERYONE in the chain."

Another person commiserated, saying: "I so sympathize. We have the exact same thing going on and we're fighting it here in Colorado. … My advice: look up the exact ordinance and check to see what the exceptions are."

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