Just a question : were these particular regulations on the book for safety reasons (I’m thinking fires, because there are similar regulations about removing bushes or such things here in areas with a high incidence of fires, sometimes in subburban zones which happen to be close to forests in dry areas), which would certainly make sense, or for aesthetic reasons?
I know in our area there are limited rules about your yard, and they seem pretty reasonable: essentially, if it’s gonna be a fire or wildlife hazard, you can’t do it.
Wildlife hazards are no joke in a part of the country that has copperheads and rattlesnakes, incidentally: tall grass and especially brushpiles can be great habitat for venomous snakes. And while venomous snakes are a wonderful part of the native ecosystem, they’re not such a wonderful part of a neighborhood.
For me, despite the aforementioned lawn repair newspaper shreddings, I’m much more interested in growing flowers or especially vegetables. I’ve got no desire to be that guy that brags about what fertilizer he uses on his lawn.
Daniel
I don’t know for sure–I just know I made sure to get it “up to code” before I had to find out about the punishment side of it. 
But there aren’t any rattlers around here, so it wasn’t that. And brushfires on 10" high green weeds (because really, there wasn’t any real grass just trashweeds) seems a bit implausible here in Ohio. I think it was just more of a “community standards aesthetic” but I’m not positive.
I admit I like the idea of having a nicely-kept yard. I fantasize about sitting on the back porch, enjoying a cool breeze while looking on my own private patch of green velvet, trimmed with an assortment of nice flowers. Is that too much to ask?
Of course, my back yard is currently a hodge-podge of weeds, crabgrass, and Primus-knows-what-else, so it’s not quite there yet. I’ve apparently failed to make my “Gardening Ability” attribute roll…
WTF IS crabgrass, anyways? WHY is it so bad?
Unkept lawns attrack snakes, as was mentioned. In some areas, poisonous snakes. And for those of us with sensitive skin, I tend to get rashes if I wade through long, unkept grass. (Don’t ask me why, I have no idea).
You don’t have to have a perfect lawn, but at least keep it nice and neat.
Crabgrass is the big sprawling clumps of flat grass, like a crab’s legs, and it’s bad because it’s ugly and takes over your yard. And has roots like a million tiny little white worms that you have to SIFT out of the soil when you dig up crabgrass-infested lawn for garden beds or else the crabgrass will be BACK!
When I was in my early teens, the couple who owned the house three down from us ‘found religion’ of some not-very-mainstream type. As a result of their new beliefs they turned their yard from just another of the mostly-grass lawns typical of the area into food-productive gardens.
It took several years, but eventually every square inch of their yard was turned into gardens.
They had espaliered (I fairly sure I’ve spelled that wrong) fruit trees all along the chain link fence on the north property line. The entire back yard was a GIANT vegetable garden, all the usual things plus stuff (like asparagus and corn and potatoes) that home gardeners rarely bother with. The south side yard was berry patches: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and more. They were out there many hours every day, tending all this, plus often they had whole gangs of other people in, helping to plant or especially to harvest the fruit trees.
All of this had been overlooked by the neighbors (since it was to a large degree out of sight) but then they turned the front yard into gardens, too: squash and pumpkins and zucchinis spreading every which way like a mutant green monster from space – out across the sidewalk, in fact, and it would have gone further no doubt except the cars driving over the tendrils kept the street clear. There were also dozens of teepee shaped trellises with green beans and other stuff growing up them scattered around the front yard.
This got up the noses of some very yard-proud types, who complained to the police and town selectmen and everyone else they could think of. So the couple got an official looking letter from the town attorney, about community standards and violating the zoning laws (? I guess because it was residential and not ‘farm’ zoned) and so forth, instructing them to conform or face possible legal repercussions.
Two days later the couple erected a BIG sign on their front yard, right up at the sidewalk line. It read something like this:
-=-=-=-=-
Last year over XXXX pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables were raised in this yard. ALL of this food, which would have cost thousands of dollars to buy, was given to the [name of church, I forget it now]'s Relief Mission, where hundreds of hungry men, women and children are fed free meals every day.
Just how precious is your fucking grass anyway?
-=-=-=-
(I cheered – hey, I was the anti-establishment type.)
The sign stayed up for a few weeks, then vanished, but so far as I know, nothing else was said about the lack of lawn, and the gardens were still flourishing when my parents sold that house and moved away. (Not due to the gardens, it was a job transfer.)
Thanks.
H’uh. That looks like most any other grass. Or at least, we probably have it in our yard-my dad doesn’t really care about having a perfect lawn, so we have a lot of wild flowers (dandelions and such).
Oh, I’m wildly indifferent to lawn. Ugly monoculture that takes more work than it’s worth if I’m not running a football stadium. I just hate clearing it while digging gardens.
Awesome!
Daniel
I don’t need a perfect lawn, just one that’s not overgrown with knee-high weeds which grow an inch every half-hour.
I grew up in a small Saskatchewan farming town, where having a lawn in your back yard would just be weird. Back yards were for gardens. I remember moving into the city from this small town and thinking how strange it was to see yards that didn’t have gardens in the back. I mean, how do you eat fresh peas and carrots and raspberries if you don’t grow them? Everything’s relative, I guess. (Oh, if someone wanted to garden the front yard too, I don’t think all the retired farmers would have had a problem with it.)