City Council levels homeowner's garden

Thoughts? I debated putting this in the Cider Press, but it isn't *that* controversial.

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Thoughts?  

What might be some intelligent ways to address something like this before the workers come to undo all of your work?

j

Jim Garlits wrote:Thoughts? I debated putting this in the Cider Press, but it isn't *that* controversial.  

I'm teasing! But I'm superstitious

Communication and teaching is fundamental. I think a lot of issues erupt over poor communication. It is far to easy today to put up a post on social media wondering about someone else's business making assumptions rather than walk on over and strike up a conversation. I think a lot of this has to do with the technological age we are in with instant access to other's attention where knocking on someone's door seems almost foreign. Nothing wrong with it, but we lose some skills I feel because of it.

If it goes beyond that, and it truly is something where local laws and regulations are ignorant of beneficial environments then the slow trudge to change should be worked on. Talk with your neighbors, your friends. Create a petition and provide reasons for why keeping the plants that you keep is a benefit for the community. It can be work, but it is the good work that leads to progress.

I don't like to click links because I have an old desktop computer.

I read one account where state agriculture officials desperately tried to eradicate the invasive Oriental fruit fly.

Did that have anything to do with what I read?

No, they pulled up his garden and fruit trees because they were “weeds.”

j

Anne Miller wrote:I don't like to click links because I have an old desktop computer.

I read one account where state agriculture officials desperately tried to eradicate the invasive Oriental fruit fly.

Did that have anything to do with what I read?

I hope this partial quote from thecooldown.com qualifies as "fair use." Essentially, municipal workers in Virginia chopped out 10 year old fruiting trees and shrubs.

Tim Saunders told WFXR that a code enforcement officer issued a warning for him to remove weeds and trash from his garden.

While Saunders noted he had an upturned yard chair and a bucket in the area, there was also “a bunch of vegetation, a lot of trees and perennials that were hibernating” that were mistaken for weeds.

With that, Saunders cleared up the debris but left the flora, which included two pear trees, blackberry bushes, and medicinal plants, all of which he harvested.

But the city officials still weren’t satisfied, and in February, he received a phone call from his mother telling him a crew had arrived to cut down the bushes and trees.

“If people want to grow food and try to provide for their families, that should be a pretty simple thing for a citizen to do,” he told WFXR. “If we can’t do this on our own land, especially when times are tough and food is more expensive, then where can we do this?”

The article doesn't indicate that this gentleman interacted with the code (bylaw) enforcement officer to explain the species that were there or try to work out a compromise. The other thing is that these departments, from what I've seen, don't usually show interest unless a neighbour lodges a complaint.

So on the surface it seems that communication and engagement may have been a better strategy.

Knowing how bossy and ignorant neighbours and the government can be, this sadly doesn't surprise me, in fact I think this individual may have posted here a while ago seeking help, but I think he posted it in the wrong forum so it didn't get much attention, maybe in the experiences forum?  Maybe I'm mixing this up with another similar situation?  I think its likely not this person's fault, I'm blaming others for this one, because people do this to each other all the time.  Heck, a restaurant in Portland about a half hour north of me got shut down because of "repeated anonymous complaints about food smells at the restaurant".  I mean city government really is this stupid.  Fortunately this restaurant case made the news so I bet the city will quietly fix it so they don't have the spotlight shone on their stupidity.  I wish there was a way for all of us to help this person whose garden got trounced.  If I were him I'd sell the house and move somewhere more functional.

Jim, It beggars belief that this can happen.  There other examples here on Permies of exactly the same thing happening.  Here in Australia, we have folk who hate with a passion solar farms and wind turbines because they ruin the visual aspects of the landscape, but it is that exact same group who turn up to protest coal fired power stations.  When I see this, I need to get back into Paul's building a better world book just reassure myself there are actually people in this world who ACTUALLY get it.  Paul shows what IT is in spades but even then ........ OMG.  Thank the Gods for our fabulous Permies Family.

I feel real heartfelt sadness for this guy.  

It is sad what happened to this person.

Why did they ignore the warnings?

When someone lives inside the city limits there are guidelines to follow.

One is that lawns are to be mowed. They ignored the warnings.

So instead of mowing the lawn the city took action and mowed everything when the owner had a simple solution.

I wonder if a fence would have saved their garden.  Heartbreaking.

When I read your post, the dilemma involved reached out and elbowed me in the ribs:

If you tell the city what you're doing, so that you can explain the reasons behind it, you've just made yourself a potential target.

If a neighbor tells the city what you're doing, they've made you a potential target.

If the city sees what you're doing, they've identified you as a potential target.

I don't have any quick and easy answers, and I think that is why the story moved me enough to post it here.

The hard but most sustainable answer is that more of us need to become more involved in local politics. Not all of us, but some of us.

One of the biggest reasons that silly ordinances get passed is because so few people attend city council meetings and county commissioner's meetings. It allows a few people to proceed with little input from a larger and more experienced group. If one person had showed up at the meeting where the issue was addressed, they might have been able to educate the council on permaculture techniques. They might have been able to introduce ordinances favorable to permaculture when the board opened up the floor to new business. They could have invited a horticulturalist to come in and explain how the stuff growing in the gentleman's yard wasn't weeds, no matter what the neighbor thought.

j

Anne Miller wrote:It is sad what happened to this person.

Why did they ignore the warnings?

When someone lives inside the city limits there are guidelines to follow.

One is that lawns are to be mowed. They ignored the warnings.

So instead of mowing the lawn the city took action and mowed everything when the owner had a simple solution.

I certainly don`t think I suggested telling anyone anything.

Tim Saunders told WFXR that a code enforcement officer issued a warning for him to remove weeds and trash from his garden.

Why did these people ignore the warnings that they received?

If I got a warning to mow the lawn, I would mow the lawn.

A very long time ago I lived in the big city of Dallas, Texas.

I mowed the lawn.  I knew the consequences.  I didn`t have valuable fruit trees.

You just can't win in a battle with City Hall because they have more money than you to win the fight.

This is why we love living in a very small village with few ordinances.
It's an old community that leans towards eccentric folks although it has an out of proportion number of churches.

Many have chickens, our bordering neighbor has goats and a pig...lots of gardens around.

Downside, it leaves little room to complain about someone burning plastic and the number of loose dogs.

Jim Garlits wrote:No, they pulled up his garden and fruit trees because they were “weeds.”

Probably what happened is the city sent a person out with equipment that plowed everything down.

Is there a picture of someone pulling the trees up?  Sounds like a lot of work when they could just be plowed down.

There are some older posts here on the forum where this has happened to forum members.  I doubt if it would be an easy task to find these posts.

On a related subject, the Illinois Department of Transportation began planting Prairie Grass in selected plots at some of its interstate rest areas. Each plot had a marker giving the history of Prairie Grass.  The state was flooded with complaints about how the rest areas were overgrown with weeds.

John F Dean wrote:On a related subject, the Illinois Department of Transportation began planting Prairie Grass in selected plots at some of its interstate rest areas. Each plot had a marker giving the history of Prairie Grass.  The state was flooded with complaints about how the rest areas were overgrown with weeds.

To think people would take the time of day to complain about a rest stop's landscaping. I was dismayed once traveling to Alabama from New York to stop at a rest stop and proceed to watch two gentlemen on different zero turn mowers go back and forth over bare sand/dirt kicking up a dust storm and not cut ANY grass for about ten minutes. I feel sometimes we do things without thinking if we even need to do such actions. Ohh well! Progress is a slow thing.

I thought it was one of the better things IDOT has done.  There was a great deal of quality information provided. It reduced the mowing by half. In my eyes, it was attractive.

i kept encouraging my friend to diversify his tree in his front yard by attaching orchids to it.  eventually he did so.  shortly afterwards his hoa cut down all the trees in order to avoid having to pay for pruning them.  my other friend has a condo in palm springs which she bought in large part because there were citrus and other fruit trees planted in the commons.  the hoa decided to cut them all down in order to save on water costs.  

personally, i had to pay a $400 fine to the city of los angeles for failing to maintain an orderly front yard.  i never wanted an orderly garden, i always wanted a wild habitat for the most amount of nature, which meant overgrown diversity.  

at the last scion exchange i attended, i met a lady who plants gardens for public schools.  i thought that was so cool and naturally i asked about fruit trees.  she said that they weren't allowed to plant them at schools.  if i recall correctly she wasn't quite sure why but mentioned possibilities like rats and kids slipping on fallen fruit.  she might have mentioned choking hazards and allergies?  

in the case of the hoa's, the cost of the trees was easy to measure.  but how do you measure the benefit of trees?  

in the case of the public schools, a kid being injured by fruit and suing is tangible.  but how do you measure the benefit of the fruit to all the kids and teachers?  

in my case, my wild and overgrown front yard really caused one or more of my neighbors $400 worth of harm?  so if my front yard was worthy of gracing the cover of sunset magazine, i could charge my neighbors $400 for their enjoyment of my yard?  per month or per year...?  

Jim Garlits wrote:One of the biggest reasons that silly ordinances get passed is because so few people attend city council meetings and county commissioner's meetings. It allows a few people to proceed with little input from a larger and more experienced group. If one person had showed up at the meeting where the issue was addressed, they might have been able to educate the council on permaculture techniques. They might have been able to introduce ordinances favorable to permaculture when the board opened up the floor to new business. They could have invited a horticulturalist to come in and explain how the stuff growing in the gentleman's yard wasn't weeds, no matter what the neighbor thought.

parents and their kids are supposed to sit in traffic, and then sit in a city council meeting, in order to provide their input on how much their kids would enjoy having fruit trees at their school?  how does that input get translated into a quantifiable and measurable benefit?  

It is impossible for anyone, even if he be a statesman of genius, to weigh the whole community's utility and sacrifice against each other.  - Knut Wicksell

utility = benefit
sacrifice = cost

right now i'm typing in a text box.  on the left i see a list of categories...

permaculture forums
growies
critters
building
homesteading

and so on.  each category provides this community with a certain amount of benefit.  can any of us correctly guess the benefit in dollars?  

here's an idea.  let's give everyone in this community the opportunity to donate for their favorite categories.  this would raise money for the forum and allow us to measure the benefit of each category to the community.  naturally the order of the categories should be determined by their benefit.  the most beneficial category should be at the top.  

a couple basic facts about communities...

1. every community needs funding
2. every community needs to make decisions

donations should be used to make decisions.  this is true for when the community is small like this forum and hoa's.  it's especially true for when the community is as large as los angeles.  

just more proof its a crazy mixed up world we live in

Our local environmental education centre is a public school where kids come from all over to do environmental studies.  About 25 years ago, the groundsman planted lots of fruit trees.  Someone at the Department of Education deemed that the students could not eat the fruit because it was not commercially grown so posed a risk.  The school staff had to buy all fruit and vegetables from the local supermarket.

Fortunately, a great lady by the name of Stephanie Alexander started school gardening and with the students making lunched from what they grew in the garden as well as using eggs from the school's chickens.  At the time, it was an uphill battle for her, despite her being a popular media personality.  Commonsense has now prevailed and there are a lot of schools with gardens and cooking as part of the lessons.

Last time I was at our EEC, the students were able to eat the fruit and our local growers network has set up a community garden there.  I think the trick is to get a high profile media personality on board to provide "guidance" and inject a little common sense into the discussion.

At our previous home, I got a love notice from the town to mow our lawn.  I should have kept it and framed it!  But, they also granted me a permit to have live stock in our suburban backyard, so they weren’t all bad…

Now I fight with the county when they want to mow off the short plants I have in the road right of way.

My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Now we will have to spend our time going to the County Commissioners Court to get this resolved.

Anne Miller wrote:My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Now we will have to spend our time going to the County Commissioners Court to get this resolved.

Make sure you have some before and after photographs .  I think the big question here is whether your fence was OK and would their actions pass the pub test.

In Australia, the pub test is a standard for judging policies, proposals and decisions. Something which "passes the pub test" is something the ordinary patron in an Australian pub would understand and accept to be fair, were it to come up in conversation. The test may also be applied to individual people; as would what they say  "pass the pub test" if the average Australian drinker would perceive them as authentic and likeable.

Paul Fookes wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Now we will have to spend our time going to the County Commissioners Court to get this resolved.

Make sure you have some before and after photographs .  I think the big question here is whether your fence was OK and would their actions pass the pub test.

In Australia, the pub test is a standard for judging policies, proposals and decisions. Something which "passes the pub test" is something the ordinary patron in an Australian pub would understand and accept to be fair, were it to come up in conversation. The test may also be applied to individual people; as would what they say  "pass the pub test" if the average Australian drinker would perceive them as authentic and likeable.

I refer to it as the Walmart test…

Paul Fookes wrote:At the time, it was an uphill battle for her, despite her being a popular media personality.  Commonsense has now prevailed and there are a lot of schools with gardens and cooking as part of the lessons.

Last time I was at our EEC, the students were able to eat the fruit and our local growers network has set up a community garden there.  I think the trick is to get a high profile media personality on board to provide "guidance" and inject a little common sense into the discussion.

Excellent. Yeah, sometimes it's necessary to effectively shame "the system" into accepting an obvious and rational approach that all reasonable citizens would accept. Sometimes "the system" gets caught up in a silly feedback loop and needs a WTF?? nudge/kick.

Anne Miller wrote:My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Ugh. Nasty.

Paul said, Make sure you have some before and after photographs

Well if I had know this was going to happen I would have taken some before photos ...

The guy from the maintenance dept. came right on out to see the damage though that does not mean that they will come right on out to fix it.

What might be some intelligent ways to address something like this before the workers come to undo all of your work?

I agree where communication and education was mentioned, it is certainly important. I also think aesthetics is important too. This might be something that is easy to overlook in permaculture thinking, and beauty would be especially important to urban areas. Perhaps maintaining a more manicured look in the more visible areas would be helpful. Choose to plant common garden flowers and showy foliage at the perimeters. Add elements of art to create focal points here and there.

Anne Miller wrote:My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Now we will have to spend our time going to the County Commissioners Court to get this resolved.

Anne,
How awful!
why did they level your fence?

Becky Proske wrote:Perhaps maintaining a more manicured look in the more visible areas would be helpful. Choose to plant common garden flowers and showy foliage at the perimeters.

I think paying attention to aesthetics is an excellent suggestion. If you work with the psychology  of city dwellers maybe  you can hide your permie experiment in plain sight!

It would attract less negative attention if it looks like it's clearly "on purpose" instead of "a neglected weed patch." A winding path, hardscape elements, manicured borders with bright flowers, and absolutely no junk or debris.

A sign outside that says "Medicinal Herb and Pollinator Garden" might also help. Also signs by each type of plant with the Latin name, which people find suitably intimidating.

Gray Henon wrote:…Now I fight with the county when they want to mow off the short plants I have in the road right of way.

I currently live within city limits of a town and saw a neighbor have a sign saying "please don't mow" along the right of way in front of his house. I was happy to see that it was actually respected!

Anne Miller wrote:My neighbor came by last night to tell us that the county had leveled our fence.

Now we will have to spend our time going to the County Commissioners Court to get this resolved.

What? Without any warning or reason given?

Becky Proske wrote:

What might be some intelligent ways to address something like this before the workers come to undo all of your work?

I agree where communication and education was mentioned, it is certainly important. I also think aesthetics is important too. This might be something that is easy to overlook in permaculture thinking, and beauty would be especially important to urban areas. Perhaps maintaining a more manicured look in the more visible areas would be helpful. Choose to plant common garden flowers and showy foliage at the perimeters. Add elements of art to create focal points here and there.

Yes! I have been having the same thought. Plant flowers and/or bushes that bloom, etc. It shows thoughtful planting and also gives joy to people. People may be much more forgiving with what is behind said beautiful plants (should what is behind be able to possibly be perceived as "messy") if given something uplifting in front. And who doesn't love flowers? :-) One could also put a couple of simple, one-sentence quotes that have a positive message on little placards on low stakes and plant them between said flowers and bushes. All of that also shows a giving, community-minded person on that property which makes it much more likely to have the good will of neighbors.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Also signs by each type of plant with the Latin name, which people find suitably intimidating.

LOL - that is brilliant!