Gardens as battlegrounds

What could be more benign than planting flowers for bees, birds and butterflies? Healthy habitats in our yards benefit everyone, from pollinators to people.

Unfortunately, planting a garden that supports biodiversity renders you vulnerable to disgruntled neighbours, botanically challenged bylaw officers and politicians who value outdated notions of “neatness” over environmental health. This can translate into serious fines, public prosecution and neighbourhood policing.

Gardens have become battlegrounds in the climate crisis:

A Burlington gardener was ordered to mow down goldenrods, asters and milkweeds — all great pollinator plants. When she refused (arguing her garden conforms to local bylaws), the city did the mowing, charged her for it and is threatening to put a lien on her house.

A Mississauga gardener’s meadow was mowed down by city staff while endangered monarch butterflies flitted around the whipper-snippers destroying their home.

A Toronto gardener who took the city to court after her native plant garden was mowed down by officials and who received compensation, received two advisory notices this summer warning her to cut her “weeds.”

These are not anomalies. They’re caused by bad (even illegal) bylaws that have antiecological provisions baked into them. Burlington’s bylaw, for example, mandates that all properties must be maintained “free from any nests of bees,” which makes successfully providing nesting habitat for native bees illegal.

Many municipal bylaws consider grass clippings and leaves “waste” that must be removed from the landscape, although many pollinators overwinter in dead plant stems and fallen leaves, all of which return valuable organic matter to the soil and store carbon.

The term “weeds” is also problematic. “Weeds” are undefined in most bylaws, leading to vague and arbitrary enforcement. The Provincial Weed Control Act’s list of 25 “noxious weeds” (referred to in Burlington’s bylaw) is specific to agricultural areas, not cities.

The Burlington property owner is clear that no “noxious weeds” are in their garden, but the city has not provided any details as to which “noxious weeds” allegedly exist. Without a clear list of locally prohibited plants that pose a risk to health or safety, how is anyone to know what to plant? People are left to wonder what will be arbitrarily designated as a “weed” and ordered cut by bylaw officers who aren’t trained to identify plants. Is it a surprise people may hesitate to plant a natural garden?

The Ontario Superior Court has already ruled that terms such as “unsightly” and “overgrown” are vague and subjective and, thus, unenforceable, and that people have the constitutionally protected right to a natural garden, subject only to health and safety restrictions.

Natural gardens benefit everyone: they build soils, store carbon, slow stormwater, cool our communities, provide food, shelter and habitat for birds and pollinators — and they contribute to our mental and physical well-being.

Cities worldwide are championing the importance of connections to nature, and enacting policies that support biodiversity. So why do cities persist in bullying those who support biodiversity in their gardens? People doing their bit for climate resilience will not be free to do so until bylaws that punish those who dare to deviate from the “lawn norm” are weeded out of municipal codes.

As we reckon with a world on fire, creatures disappearing, and overheated cities becoming unlivable, it might seem insignificant to focus on the need to reform grass and weeds bylaws. But our gardens are the very place we can contribute positive change, at home with our hands in the soil.

It’s beyond time for municipal bullying over butterflies and beebalm to stop. We have the right to biodiversity — for humans, our future and for all our relations.