I'm reminded of an article I read once, it seems to have gone offline, an interview with indie game dev Jason Rohrer. He said the city took him to court for not mowing his lawn. He ended up winning under the 1st amendment (the lawn was "free expression" or something...)[0]
I thought that was really interesting (and obviously wouldn't work in other countries).
The other day I walked around the neighborhood and found this massive patch of grass and weeds that had been mowed, and scorched by the sun, so it was just mostly dead. Barely 5 minutes away, the city had fenced out special plots and paid to have a bunch of weeds instlled, to help the bees. Comedy.
[0] Edit: Yeah it's deleted. I found backups though!
> I thought that was really interesting (and obviously wouldn't work in other countries).
I don't know about other countries, but in Poland you're just not required to cut down your lawn at all, unless it's a fire hazard (you have a lot of dead and dried up plants).
Not just HOAs. Talk grass allows insects and vermin to move more freely. In cities, this contributes to their spread, so some places have city-wide ordinances that require lawn maintenance.
Rat and mice infestations are not fun. I have had enough trouble dealing with my pollinator and monarch butterfly habitats and mice. I actually TRY to get rabbits and squirrels but mice go after their babies.
Most city code about turfgrass lawns mandates cutting them if you have one. If you don’t want to maintain a lawn by keeping it trimmed, rip it out. It’s a non-native monoculture, allowing it to grow un-maintained is uh, stupid. Rip the sod out and plant clover and daisies, problem solved.
My city also requires “noxious weeds” to be removed, which is a state requirement that the city inherited/adopted: https://www.mda.state.mn.us/minnesota-noxious-weed-list It’s comprised of invasive species like Japanese knotweed and buckthorn and others I am unfamiliar with. Our State Parks and also private landowners use goats to get rid of buckthorn similar to other places.
That being said, city code in my city would allow you to replace a grass law with clover or native plants/grasses or landscaping or wooded areas, etc. The code simply says “If you have a grass lawn you must cut it if the grass generates seeds or is 8” long.”
I mean, I get it - I somewhat agree with your take, but this is somewhat of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" case.
I think you undermine your argument when you don't understand the complaint. Because I'd also like to see a lot more native plants, and less manicured, mono-culture yards with poison sprayed all over them.
But at least in my area, the problem isn't "oh look a spider"... it's "oh shit, that house is collapsing because of termites", and "Oh shit, my neighbor's mom's house just burned down because rats chewed through the wiring in the walls", and "Fuck me! That's hogweed growing in that yard! Time to call the city".
Pests are a real concern - they cause lots of monetary damage, and can seriously injure or hurt people if not monitored. Does that mean we should nuke everything with chemicals and make a sterile hellscape? No - I don't think it does.
The complaint is not well founded and doesn't explain how native landscapes make the problem any worse.
A healthy ecosystem with owls, snakes, and coyotes will keep rodents in check. But well before that point, the ubiquitous feral domestic cats usually wreak havoc on pests and songbirds alike. Not to mention that most of the problem starts with bad food storage and waste management in the first place, not tall grasses or a few fruit trees (hence the flocks of pigeons and seagulls around parking lot dumpsters).
Plus, no one is trying to stop you from tenting houses for termites, which are meditated by landscape practices like mulch and irrigation rather than the types of plants themselves.
There are municipalities in the US with lawn ordinances, mine has one.
> Tall Grass and Weeds
> Weeds or grass more than eight inches high or that have gone to seed must be cut or mowed. Noxious weeds, as defined by the state Department of Agriculture, must be controlled or destroyed completely.
Generally, property in places where the landscape is well-maintained is worth substantially more than property where half the lawns are uncut and the fence lines are overgrown with weeds.
The US is a land of individualists who also have most of their wealth tied up in their homes so property ordinances are popular, despite the “I can do whatever I want” attitude of American culture.
It wouldn't work e.g. in Germany since here we don't have "home owners associations" that reduce the freedom of whole housing areas. That is: you are "mostly" free in the first place to grow whatever you want.
Mostly ? because there is always complexity with law. For example, if you grow a huge tree that takes all the sun from your neighbor, then you're tapping into the freedom of your neighbor. And then the neighbor can ask you to remove or at least trim the tree ... absolute freedom almost always hinder others.
And so yes, there are cases where people though "My own freedom for a posh garden is diminished due to the biosphere of my neighbor, All the weed seeds are flowing to me". And people took others before court. And then each individual case is looked at. And often enough the case is just turned down because of the constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression.
And that, in turn, means that "obviously won't work in other countries" is wrong.
How US-Americans with one of the worst constitution and law systems of the western world constantly think that "only they" have something freedom-related is beyond me. If you look at your history ... you had slavery --- with your current constitution. You had genocide and trail of tears --- with your current constitution. You have gerrymandering --- with your current constitution. You sentence people to death but from 7482 death penalties of 1973-2004 a whole 4.1% were in error --- under your constitution. Each of these was or is an extreme reduction of people's freedom.
I'm reminded of an article I read once, it seems to have gone offline, an interview with indie game dev Jason Rohrer. He said the city took him to court for not mowing his lawn. He ended up winning under the 1st amendment (the lawn was "free expression" or something...)[0]
I thought that was really interesting (and obviously wouldn't work in other countries).
The other day I walked around the neighborhood and found this massive patch of grass and weeds that had been mowed, and scorched by the sun, so it was just mostly dead. Barely 5 minutes away, the city had fenced out special plots and paid to have a bunch of weeds instlled, to help the bees. Comedy.
[0] Edit: Yeah it's deleted. I found backups though!
https://archive.ph/j9025
https://web.archive.org/web/20150315123808/https://www.esqui...