Native Perennial Gardens: 1. HOAs: 0

Tiny urban perennial gardens attract wildlife, pollinators, clean the air and capture storm water.

Your HOA can no longer force you to maintain an ecological dead zone around your home in Maryland, thanks to a couple who went to court to protect their native perennial garden.

Whatever it was, their neighbor’s mounting resentment burst to the fore in the fall of 2017, in the form of a letter from a lawyer for their homeowner association that ordered the Crouches to rip out their native plant beds, and replace them with grass.

The couple were stunned. They’d lived on their quiet cul-de-sac harmoniously with their neighbors for years, and chose native plants to help insects, birds and wildlife thrive. Now the association was telling them that their plantings not only violated the bylaws, but were eyesores that hurt property values. “Your yard is not the place for such a habitat,” the letter read.

But as ecologist Douglas W. Tallamy writes, “This idea that humans and nature cannot coexist is destroying the entire planet, which in turn is destroying humans. The only way forward is to coexist.”

So when Janet and Jeff Crouch fought their neighbors’ demand that they destroy their garden, the state of Maryland backed them up with a new environmental law. As of October 2021, HOAs are no longer allowed to forbid eco-friendly yards.

And it’s time that all humans stopped equating conformity with safety.