Specific municipalities' property standards bylaws: critiques and recommendations

For many years and for different reasons, I’ve been writing critiques of (and recommending changes to) various municipalities’ property standards/grass and weeds bylaws. Sometimes it’s to support a community group that’s interested in advocating for bylaw change. Sometimes it’s for staff and/or Councillors in various municipalities who have expressed an interest. And sometimes it’s just to gather my thoughts into a format that might be useful, somewhere, somehow, sometime.

As part of the national campaign for bylaw reform I’m involved in (with the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, Canadian Wildlife Federation, David Suzuki Foundation, and Ecological Design Lab), I’ve decided to post these critiques of specific bylaws in specific municipalities (Ottawa, Burlington, Hamilton, Kingston, Mississauga).

Keep in mind that these critiques were written for various audiences. I hope they provide useful guidance for municipalities and community groups interested in working to reform property standards/grass and weeds bylaws in support of biodiversity and naturalized yards and gardens in their cities and towns.

Ottawa's property standards bylaws are in need of reform!

After hearing about a number of really outrageous recent bylaw enforcement actions in Ottawa (someone in Kanata being told to remove all the dead leaves from their yard; someone else having her garden completely razed to the ground; a native plant gardener being told that her goldenrod is a prohibited plant…), I decided to take a close look at the existing property standards bylaws in Ottawa (including the newly revised (2023) “boulevard” bylaw) and write a critique of what needs changing in them.

I was shocked to discover that the Ottawa bylaws are some of the worst I’ve seen: vague, arbitrary, mandating conformity to the neighbourhood, not defining what species are prohibited, not itemizing height requirements, using aesthetic terms that are open to vastly different subjective interpretations…

Here’s a link to the full text of my critique, in case anyone (or a group) is curious and open to working to advocate for change in Ottawa:

If you’re interested in a summary rather than reading the full critique, here it is:

There are 3 different bylaws in Ottawa related to yards/gardens: Property Maintenance Bylaw No 2005-208, Property Standards Bylaw No 2014-416, and Use and Care of Roads Bylaw No 2003-498.

The main problems with these 3 bylaws are:

• The official and legal text of the bylaws are not on the City’s website.

• It’s unclear as to whether the “Naturalized Area” information on the City’s website is part of the Property Maintenance bylaw or not, creating uncertainty for residents.

• The lack of definition of “weeds” or “grass,” which means residents don’t know what plants are prohibited, and prohibitions will be subjectively determined by enforcement officers.

• The use (and regulation) of the subjective term “heavy undergrowth.”

• The use (and regulation) of aesthetic language such as “unsightly.”

• The requirement that yards/gardens must conform to whatever landscapes their neighbours have (“consistent with the surrounding environment”).

• The prohibition against leaving the leaves, leaving plant stalks, and including twigs, branches and nurse logs as habitat features, because all are “garden refuse” which must be “cleaned” up.

Here’s hoping that an Ottawa group will take on the task of advocating for the reform of these terrible bylaws and their enforcement!

Take Action for Bylaw Reform

Below is an open letter to municipalities, written by the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecological Design Lab, and me, that we ask you to download (click on the black button at the end of the post) and send to your Councillor and Mayor. We are advocating for the reform of outdated “grass and weeds” bylaws and enforcement practices that place barriers in the way of cultivating habitat gardens.

Oak Garden Ordered Cut

Eric Davies is one of Toronto’s most vocal advocates for the heritage oak trees that have managed to survive in this rapidly developing urban environment. For more than a decade, Eric has been collecting and propagating acorns from the city’s oldest oak trees and giving young trees to community projects, schools, residents’ associations, Indigenous land stewards, neighbours—basically, anyone who’s concerned about Toronto’s urban forest and wants to grow trees for the future.

Ironically, the mini-forest Eric has planted in front of the apartment building where he lives in Toronto’s west end is now under threat. The City has issued a Notice of Violation, ordering the vegetation—oak saplings and native perennials—cut to below 0.85 metres and the removal of the 100-year-old red oak log Eric salvaged, with permission, from the City’s forestry facility and that serves as a welcoming neighbourhood bench for passersby.

According to the Notice of Violation, the vegetation is “obstructing/encumbering/damaging/fouling” the street and the “decorative log” causes an “obstruction/nuisance/dangerous condition.”

Like most front-yard gardens in the city, Eric’s planting is on the municipal right-of-way, what’s known as the street allowance, which in small Toronto yards can extend to the porch or house. Perhaps most residents who garden in their small front yards aren’t aware that a significant portion of their planting is actually an encroachment. Indeed, most gardeners care for these right-of-way spaces with impunity. In Eric’s case, most likely someone complained. This triggered an inspection, a Notice of Violation, and an order to cut the trees and plants down to 0.85 metres within seven days or face “further enforcement measures,” including a fine.

Given the City’s goal of increasing the tree canopy to 40 per cent by 2050, one might expect that Eric’s mini-forest would be embraced, not threatened with destruction. Along with his own front-yard contribution to the tree canopy, Eric has given away thousands of oak trees for others to plant. But the value of what he’s doing goes far beyond numbers alone: by propagating acorns from the city’s old-growth oaks, he is preserving the irreplaceable genetics of heritage trees before they succumb to old age, the degraded conditions of the city’s ravines and natural areas, and to development. Eric is a champion of the future forest, preserving through propagation the unique adaptations to local conditions that these oak trees contain in their genetic make-up. Climate change and biodiversity loss add urgency to the crucial work Eric is doing.

The order to cut down to 0.85 metres the oak saplings and the dozens of native perennials Eric has planted with them and that naturally grow in association with oak trees, is an order to cut down a regenerating oak ecosystem. This ecosystem has much in common with the rare oak savanna in High Park, which the City has committed to protecting. Eric’s planting is one piece in what could be—should be—a matrix of oak ecosystem protection in the city.

 The Notice of Violation would be understandable if the planting interfered with sightlines or if the log obstructed passage on the sidewalk. But they don’t. The planting is set back at least 1.2 metres and the log 30 to 38 cm from the sidewalk. The sightlines are clear. Nearby are large City-planted street trees throughout the neighbourhood, and gardens with plants higher than 0.85 metres in the municipal road allowance. As with Eric’s planting, there is safety, the ability to see past the trees, and there is carefully nurtured growth.

The City recently revised its “grass and weeds” bylaw in an effort to support biodiversity and naturalized yards. Eric’s is a banner project in support of these twin, connected goals. Unfortunately, it’s also a banner example of how bylaw enforcement continues to be a problem—whether through the mistaken identification of native plants as prohibited plants or, as in Eric’s case, claiming his front-yard garden is an encroachment.

Now that the City has updated its “grass and weeds” bylaw, what needs changing are bylaw enforcement policies. Quite simply, the City needs to stop placing barriers and threatening to punish those who are trying to protect our collective future.

"All this should go" says Toronto bylaw officer

The Violation Notice for the native plant garden in the photo above.

The native plant garden in the photo above received a Violation Notice from a Toronto bylaw officer on October 1, 2023. The following are direct quotes, captured on a security camera, from the conversation between the gardener’s son and the bylaw officer. (The full conversation is roughly 5 minutes and includes a bit more of the same.)

Bylaw Officer: “I want you to cut the grass and weeds.”

Gardener’s son: “It’s not weeds. This is a native plant garden, no weeds anywhere. This is all Ontario native plants.”

Bylaw Officer: “Well, you have to clean it underneath.”

Gardener’s son: “Underneath? What’s wrong with this?”

Bylaw Officer: “It’s weeds.”

Gardener’s son: “No weeds! This is strawberries.”

Bylaw Officer: “This is not the way…”

Gardener’s son: “What do you mean? None of this is weeds.”

Bylaw Officer: “Unless you have proof…documentation that you are allowed to have this, you have to clean it out [in] 10 days.”

Gardener’s son: “All of it?!”

Bylaw Officer: “Yes”

Gardener’s son: “How high?”

Bylaw Officer: “20 centimetres. Everything should be down. When you cut it down to 20 centimetres, take pictures and send them to my email.”

Gardener’s son: “What does the law say? If this is a native plant garden, is it okay?”

Bylaw Officer: “No, unless you have documentation that this is a native plant garden and you are allowed to have it, you have to clear it to 20 centimetres.”

Gardener’s son: “What are the Prohibited Plants? How is it prohibited if it’s all native plants? I’m confused.”

Bylaw Officer: “I don’t know. I’m not an expert.”

Gardener’s son: “What about the trees and shrubs?”

Bylaw Officer: “This tree we can allow, but you have to clean underneath. All this should go.”

(Photo by Lorraine Johnson, October 2, 2023)

(Photo by Lorraine Johnson, October 3, 2023)

[It’s important to note that Toronto’s Turfgrass and Prohibited Plants bylaw lists 10 Prohibited Plants and does not include a provision regarding “documentation” or “approval” of gardens, whether native plant gardens or any other kind of garden.]

[I also want to stress that my intention is not to target or belittle this individual bylaw officer. There is a systemic problem and it needs to be addressed at a policy level. The exchange quoted above is a symptom of a broken system that will only change if we advocate for policy changes around bylaw enforcement.] For more info on advocacy, visit the Ecological Design Lab’s website section on Bylaws for Biodiversity: https://ecologicaldesignlab.ca/project/by-laws-for-biodiversity/

Despite a Court Victory, the Douglas Counter Saga Continues...

Douglas Counter is exactly the sort of gardener and volunteer that the City of Toronto’s PollinateTO program is intended to support and encourage. Not only has he created a native plant habitat garden in his front yard, backyard and boulevard, but he regularly offers community tours, sharing his knowledge and inspiring countless others to grow habitat in their yards, balconies and community projects. Even more, he is a native plant propagator extraordinaire, growing and giving away thousands of native plant seedlings to gardeners (through PollinateTO and Project Swallowtail), making it easy, low cost and do-able for others to get started on their habitat journeys.

Douglas Counter with some of the thousands of native plants he propagates and donates to gardeners. (Photo by Lorraine Johnson)

On August 16, 2023, the very day that Douglas was giving a tour of his native plant garden to City staff from the PollinateTO program and receiving accolades for his work, the bylaw enforcement office received a complaint about the “tall grass and weeds” in Douglas’ garden. (The “tall grasses” are native grasses and there are no Noxious Weeds in his intentionally planted and maintained 20+-year-old native plant garden.)

A few weeks later, Douglas received an Advisory Notice from the City, asserting that his native plant garden was in violation of the grass and weeds bylaw.

The irony of the City’s Advisory Notice goes beyond the fact that Douglas’ garden is promoted as a stellar example of a pollinator garden by one department of the City at the same time as another department is threatening the garden as a violation of the grass and weeds bylaw.

To understand the full extent of the irony, one needs to go back to the early 2000s, when Douglas took the City to court over their threat to mow down his native plant garden. Douglas won the court case. The judge ruled that the grass and weeds bylaw violated his constitutionally protected right to a “natural garden.” The court decision also affirmed the right to create a “natural garden” on the public right of way of the boulevard, subject only to health and safety restrictions.

Douglas Counter’s court case affirmed the right of gardeners to express their environmental beliefs on the public right of way of boulevards, subject only to health and safety restrictions. (Photo by Douglas Counter)

And yet, this summer, under a new and supposedly improved grass and weeds bylaw in Toronto, flawed enforcement continues. If winning a court case won’t stop this, what will?

Natural Garden Mowed Down by City of Burlington, Ontario

On June 20, 2023, the City of Burlington, Ontario, mowed down a natural garden that Karen Barnes had been cultivating for more than a decade—a garden that was free of any provincially designated Noxious Weeds and that posed no threats to public health or safety. The City flagrantly disregarded the two Ontario Court decisions (Sandy Bell case and Douglas Counter case) that have affirmed the constitutionally protected right to a natural garden in yards and boulevards, subject only to restrictions for public health or safety.

In an Order to Comply dated Nov. 2, 2022, the City ordered Karen Barnes to cut down (to 20cm) the “New England Aster, White Panicle Aster, milk weed and golden rod” (specifically named in the Order) that she had been nurturing in her front and side garden—each one a native plant, each a valuable pollinator plant, none of them Noxious Weeds.

Native asters, goldenrods and milkweeds were among the plants growing in Karen Barnes’ garden in the autumn of 2022. The plants did not impede sight lines for drivers or pedestrians, and small fences prevented plants from flopping onto the sidewalk or driveway. (Photo courtesy of Karen Barnes)

After the garden was mowed down by the City of Burlington on June 20, 2023. (Photo by Lorraine Johnson)

Prior to the recent (June 20, 2023) destruction of the garden, Karen Barnes and I met with a bylaw official, on November 27, 2022, at the garden to discuss the plants Karen was cultivating and the maintenance practices she was following. My report on this meeting and the features of this natural garden, prepared for lawyer David Donnelly (who has represented and supported many natural gardeners), can be read here:

At no point during the site visit did the bylaw official point out any prohibited plants or health and/or safety concerns in the garden. His focus was entirely on aesthetics (something already ruled by the Courts as subjective and arbitrary, and therefore unenforceable). He didn’t accept the clear signs of maintenance and deliberate cultivation that were pointed out to him.

It’s important to note that Burlington’s Lot Maintenance Bylaw has long been a problem. In 2018, another Burlington gardener, Doreen Nicoll, was ordered to cut down her milkweed plants. (Read my article about this in the link below.)

The ensuing uproar led the City of Burlington to revise its bylaw. A new bylaw was passed in 2022 that specifically allows “naturalized areas” that are “deliberately planted or cultivated with one of more species of wild flowers, shrubs, annuals, perennials, ornamental grasses, or combinations [of] them, that is monitored and maintained by a person,” a definition that clearly applies to Karen Barnes’ garden. Yet it was under this new bylaw that enforcement action was taken against her natural garden on June 20, 2023.

The exemption in Burlington’s 2022 Lot Maintenance Bylaw allows for naturalized areas.

Karen Barnes’ natural garden clearly falls within the “naturalized area” definition in Burlington’s Lot Maintenance Bylaw. Karen has deliberately planted or cultivated the plants growing and she monitors and maintains them.

Not only is the enforcement action taken against Karen Barnes’ garden outrageous, but the new bylaw is littered with anti-ecological provisions that are, quite simply, indefensible and counter to environmental well-being and human reconciliation with the natural world of which we are a part. Just a few examples:

• Leaves are labelled “waste or refuse” in the bylaw and must be removed from the front yard if the leaves are visible from the street. (Leaves, of course, have great ecological value as protective mulch and habitat for pollinators.)

• All properties must be maintained “free from any nests of bees,” which means that successfully providing nesting habitat for the roughly 70% of native bee species that are ground-nesting and the roughly 30% of native bee species that nest in spent plant stems, logs, etc., is illegal in Burlington!

• All properties must be maintained “free from any insects.” Seriously?!

This is the “new and improved” (?!) Lot Maintenance Bylaw in Burlington, in 2023?!

Karen Barnes’ natural garden after being mowed down by the City of Burlington, June 20, 2023. (Photo by Lorraine Johnson)

Details on how to support Karen Barnes’ constitutionally protected right to a natural garden will be forthcoming in another post, but for now, consider what the Bylaw Official said to Karen as her deliberately cultivated natural garden was being mowed to the ground by City workers: “Have you seen the whole street out front, all the houses? With lawns that are maintained just like everybody else? You have to do that.”

No, City of Burlington, she does not.

Invitation to the book launch for A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee

A Naturalized Garden Goes to Court...

The Town of Smiths Falls has a Land Acknowledgement that is read when official municipal business is being conducted. The Town acknowledges that the “sacred land” on which Smiths Falls is now located is “unceded territory” and that the Town is grateful to the “Algonquin ancestors who cared for the land and water” and “mindful of broken covenants and the need to reconcile with our relations.” The acknowledgement ends with a vision that “together we may care for this land and each other.”

These words opened a January 25, 2022, Property Standards Appeals Committee hearing in Smiths Falls, convened to consider whether or not Beth and Craig Sinclair were violating the Town’s “property standards” bylaw with their habitat garden. The Sinclairs had been ordered to remove the habitat logs they’d placed in the yard for wildlife; cut down their “grass and weeds” to 20cm (no “weeds” were identified or named and no measurements taken); remove or rebuild their compost “heap” (a compost bin not a “heap”); and remove all “landscaping” within 3 metres of the curb (though, of course, “landscaping” is what pretty well everyone in the town has done with lawns right to the curb and no one else has been charged with this “violation”).

The appeals committee upheld all of these orders except for the one about the compost “heap” (bin!). Everything else had to go, said the committee making the Town’s final decision about land care on unceded territory. So much for reconciling with our relations and caring for this land and each other.

The Sinclairs naturalized garden is full of pollinator-supporting plants such as swamp milkweed. (Photo by Craigh Sinclair)

The appeals committee hearing was painful to watch, and painful to participate in. After seven minutes of testimony from the first expert witness (full disclosure, that was me), the Chair intervened and asked the witness to “cut it short” or “risk losing their attention” due to “long-winded presentations.” Following the three experts’ testimony challenging each of the Town’s asserted “violations,” the only question asked of the witnesses related to aphids on the Chair’s rose plants. 

After not asking the expert witnesses any probing or relevant questions, the Chair then displayed a staggering confusion about his role in this quasi-judicial hearing. He seemed unaware that the committee’s legally mandated task was to listen to the evidence before it, weigh the evidence, and make a decision. Instead, the Chair offered his own “evidence,” not in the context of questioning the expert witnesses, but, well, just ‘cause. His expertise? He’d “worked at a garden centre full-time for five years” and done research “on the Internet.”

The Chair kept repeating that the Committee was not “empowered to interpret the bylaw,” yet saw no contradiction in saying that one phrase in the bylaw (“waste” as applied to habitat logs) “was defined very loosely in the bylaw and it gave us scope to go beyond what was written.”

Likewise, the Chair repeatedly asserted the Committee’s powerlessness to come to any conclusion other than to affirm the violations. Indeed, the Chair declared the Sinclairs guilty just past the half-way mark in the hearing. There were references in the expert testimony—including that of urban planner and policy expert Nina-Marie Lister—to the bylaw’s provision for dismissal of infractions deemed to be “minor,” but the committee did not use this provision. 

(Photo by Craig Sinclair)

The Committee also had the legislated power to defer a decision. When one of the committee members asked the Town Clerk for her opinion on the matter (surely a wildly inappropriate question), the Town Clerk highlighted the fact that the Town Council had already expressed its intention to revise the bylaw and that any decision could be deferred by the Committee until after such a review had taken place. The Committee declined to defer.

And so the Sinclairs were ordered to remove their habitat logs (despite expert testimony presenting the recommendations of 10 wildlife organizations urging the addition of habitat logs to gardens); cut undefined and unidentified weeds and grass to 20 cm; and remove all “landscaping” within 3 metres of the curb (and presumably leave bare soil).

(Photo by Craig Sinclair)

The backlash against the Committee’s decision was swift, loud and virtually universal—the hearing was a farce. A farce with damaging consequences. Damaging to efforts to care for the land and each other. Damaging to the Town’s stated goals of supporting habitat and trees. Damaging to the Town’s reputation.

There’s one thing I agree with those committee members about: there’s nothing “minor” about what the Sinclairs are doing. Instead, the Sinclairs are responding to the twin major threats of climate change and biodiversity loss by following a call to action you’ll hear from every expert you could ask: they are restoring habitat and native plants to the landscape, nurturing biodiversity for the future of the planet.

The only option available to the Sinclairs to keep their habitat garden is to appeal the Town’s decision in court, and that is what they are doing.

And so, for the third time, an Ontario court will have a naturalized garden on the docket. Why this is even necessary is hard to comprehend. Ontario courts have already been clear: vague and arbitrary references to “weeds” based on aesthetics render such bylaws unenforceable (the Sandy Bell case); gardeners have the constitutional right to natural gardens (the Sandy Bell case), including on municipal easements (the Douglas Counter case), subject only to limitations based on public health and safety (the Douglas Counter case). 

Despite the Ontario court rulings, municipalities throughout Ontario continue to have such vague and unconstitutional bylaws on their books and enforce them illegally. Will people such as the Sinclairs need to go to court over and over again to defend their legal plantings? What will it take? 

Leadership is what it will take. Residents such as the Sinclairs can continue to fight these bylaws, at great personal cost, one bad bylaw at a time. But where are elected representatives across the country in proactively reforming municipal bylaws in support of biodiversity and to conform to the court decisions on these issues? Where are organizations such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Association of Municipalities of Ontario, Canadian Institute of Planners, Ontario Professional Planners Institute, Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, etc., in advocating for change? 

We’re in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and climate emergency and these bad bylaws are major impediments to getting us to where we need to be: with habitat plantings flourishing anywhere and everywhere. How many people are not creating naturalized landscapes out of fear that they, too, will be harassed and fined?

 As long as people such as the SInclairs are forced to fight for the already-court-confirmed right to “natural gardens,” we will be stuck in a quagmire of anti-ecological, aesthetically based, subjectively interpreted, colonial, retrogressive “property standards/grass and weeds” bylaws.

Smiths Falls is in the township of Montague, which bills itself as the “Wildflower Capital of Ontario.”

And the Land Acknowledgement will no doubt continue to be uttered at the beginning of Council meetings, even as the Town has forced two people caring for the land on unceded territory to go to court.

To support the Sinclairs in their legal challenge, visit: https://smallchangefund.ca/project/safeguarding-the-right-of-canadians-to-have-naturalized-gardens/

"Ghost Plants"

While working on a new book and deciding which native plants to profile, I was confronted with one of the frustrating ironies of native plant gardening: numerous species of native plants currently not available for sale at nurseries would be grown by gardeners if they were commercially available, but nurseries aren’t growing them due, in part, to a perceived lack of demand!

It’s more complicated than that, for sure--especially the economics of growing native woodland plants that might take years before they are mature enough for nurseries to sell…

But I’ve started to think of these native species as “ghost plants.” They are memories that haunt me, spirits of what could be!

In the book Sheila Colla and I have coming out this spring, we included a list (rather than profiles) of some of these plants with a challenge to gardeners: ask for them at nurseries, urge nurseries to propagate them and to ethically source local seed, in order to expand the availability of diverse species that will grow our gardens as biodiverse habitats of ecological functioning.

Below are a few of the (Ontario) native plants that are very difficult (if not impossible) to find for sale at nurseries, but that would be fabulous additions to gardens and, I’m sure, snapped up by gardeners if they were commercially available. (I’ll be profiling these species in more detail in future posts and also adding to this list. As well, a future post will be about some of the specialty native plant nurseries that sell hard-to-find species.)

NATIVE WILDLFLOWERS:

Hooked agrimony (Agrimonia gryposepala)

Canada garlic (Allium canadense)

White camas (Anticlea elegans)

Cream-flowered rock cress, a.k.a. slender rock cress (Arabis pycnocarpa var. pycnocarpa)

Green dragon (Arisaema dracontium)

Hairy wood mint (Blephilia hirsuta)

Strawberry-bite (Blitum capitatum)

Wild hyacinth (Camassia scilloides)

Purple cress (Cardamine douglassi)

Rock harlequin (Capnoides sempervirens)

Harbinger-of-spring (Erigenia bulbosa)

White trout lily (Erythronium albidum)

Slender fragrant goldenrod (Euthamia caroliniana)

Wild licorice (Galium circaezans)

Stiff gentian (Gentianella quinquefolia)

Fringed gentian (Gentianopsis crinita)

Wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota)

Appendaged waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum)

Eastern yellow stargrass (Hypoxis hirsuta)

Dwarf lake iris (Iris lacustris)

Wood nettle (Laportea canadensis)

Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia)

Winged loosestrife (Lythrum alatum)

Three-leaved Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum trifolium)

Biennial gaura (Oenothera gaura)

Yellow wood-sorrel (Oxalis stricta)

Ditch stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides)

Virginia smartweed (Persicaria vriginiana)

Dwarf Canadian primrose (Primula mistassinica)

Lizard’s tail (Saururus cernuus)

Yellow pimpernel (Taenidia integerrima)

Rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides)

Painted trillium (Trillium undulatum)

White vervain (Verbena urticifolia)

NATIVE SHRUBS:

Eastern burning bush (Euonymus atropurpureus)

Smooth blackberry (Rubus canadensis)

NATIVE GRASSES:

Poverty oat grass (Danthonia spicata)

Tufted lovegrass (Eragrostis pectinacea var. pectinacean)

Purple lovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis)

Town of Smiths Falls Threatens Fine for Habitat Logs...

The Sinclairs have been working hard for years to create a garden that supports wildlife and biodiversity. They’ve spent thousands on native plants, had their yard certified as habitat by two non-profit organizations, and followed scientifically sound advice to add habitat features such as dead logs to their landscape.

The Sinclairs’ habitat garden in Smiths Falls, Ontario, is repeatedly visited by bylaw enforcement officers. (Photo courtesy of Craig Sinclair.)

A neighbour has been making regular complaints to the Town of Smiths Falls about the Sinclairs’ habitat garden. Bylaw officers have visited numerous times, and with each visit, the Sinclairs have been forced to defend their planting.

Recently, the Sinclairs received a violation notice, ordering them to remove the dead logs in their habitat garden because the Town considers these important habitat features to be “waste” under the Property Standards bylaw.

The logs that the Town considers “garbage” are used as habitat by wildlife such as this pileated woodpecker. (Photo courtesy of Craig Sinclair.)

When will this madness stop?

The Sinclairs are appealing this order, but it comes at great personal cost to them, emotionally and otherwise. (They were told that the fee to appeal is $150, but it’s more than the financial cost…they feel targeted and harassed for their positive environmental actions.)

The Smiths Falls Town Council spent about half an hour debating the Sinclairs’ yard, and during the debate, many misconceptions were voiced. For example, one Councillor thought that pollinator gardens could only be created in sunny gardens. Here’s a link to the Council discussion (it starts at 1:02): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIFXU6Sq9neiC5VU9QbmLtQ

Ironically, a few Councillors felt that what the Sinclairs were doing in their yard represented the way of the future, but that Council’s hands were tied because of the wording of the bylaw. Instead of changing the bylaw, or putting enforcement on hold until the bylaw could be reformed, they decided to punish the Sinclairs for their future-focused, positive actions in support of biodiversity.

(Photo courtesy of Craig Sinclair.)

This madness will only stop when people pressure municipalities across the country to reform these outdated and retrogressive bylaws. The courts have already ruled on the unconstitutionality of vague and arbitrary grass and weeds/Property Standards bylaws, but municipalities all over are ignoring the rulings. The connected crises of biodiversity loss and climate change call for each of us to advocate for biodiverse, resilient landscapes, and that includes advocating for the reform of outdated, vague and arbitrary grass and weeds bylaws!

Get Growing Goldenrod!

A borchure I co-wrote with Ryan Godfrey has just been published by the City of Toronto. The subject is goldenrod, and we’re encouraging people to rethink these wonderful plants. Along with photographs, we provide cultivation details for many goldenrod species for any garden conditions: dry sun, dry shade, rain gardens, wet spots, balcony pots, community gardens.

We wrote it because there’s a lot of misinformation out there about goldenrod. Too many people think it aggravates hay fever when ragweed, not goldenrod, is the culprit. Or they think that all species of goldenrod will “take over” the garden, when it’s only a few of the most common species (Canada goldenrod, tall goldenrod and giant goldenrod) that are prolific spreaders. Some goldenrods, in fact, are rare in the wild and others are quite compact and “tidy.”

Goldenrod needs a publicity agent, and I’m volunteering for the team.

There is simply no other plant known to support as many different species of pollinating insects as goldenrod! Entomologist Douglas Tallamy puts the number at 125 species of moths and caterpillars that are specialist feeders on goldenrod leaves. Sam Droge and Jarrod Fowler enumerate 39 species of native bees that have specialist relationsips with goldenrod pollen. And that’s not including the many, many generalist feeders on goldenrod nectar!

The late summer and fall blooms make goldenrod of crucial importance for monarch butterflies fueling for their migration and for bees (e.g., bumblebees provisioning the developing queen brood and as food for new queens preparing for hibernation).

And let’s not forget the brilliant blast of yellow, so welcome as the gardening season is waning.

For too long, goldenrod has been a victim of conventional gardening ideas that favour the “exotic” over the available! So let’s start welcoming this beauty into our managed landscapes.

3 Impossible Sites, 3 Native Plant Gardens

Through some kind of perverse tenacity, I tend to gravitate towards impossible sites for planting native plant habitat gardens. But it’s more than willful single-mindedness: I think these are the sites that we desperately need to figure out, especially as urbanization and climate change create difficult conditions everywhere.

My first impossible site was at Harbourfront, on Toronto’s lakeshore, where I was invited, in the early 2000s, to create a garden as part of their Artists Gardens program. I was offered three raised beds, in a building site in a high pedestrian traffic area, in a wind-tunnel, with no water access other than the marina’s murky waters. The soil in the beds was about 6 inches deep, if that.

The site at Harbourfront where I was invited to create a garden, as part of the Artists Gardens series.

I planted a native plant meadow, and despite the challenges, it flourished. I also planted a bed of heritage vegetables and invited people to harvest seeds and food. Weirdly, I discovered that when people are explicitly invited to take things, they rarely do!

The raised bed meadow at my Harbourfront Artists Garden.

My second impossible site was the Portland Place Pollinator Patch, on a busy street in downtown Toronto, surrounded by condos.

The site of the Portland Place Pollinator Patch prior to planting.

We planted a native plant pollinator garden that suffers from every problem imaginable: Salt inundation from the sidewalk in winter. Dogs digging, urinating and defecating, despite the “no dogs please” signage. Soil that has more in common with concrete than with a growing medium. No source of water. Wind tunnel effects from the high buildings. Mulch that won’t stay put in the wind. Late-night stomping from partiers. And yet, many of the native plants have flourished.

The Portland Place Pollinator Patch in its first year of planting.

My third impossible site is a public boulevard in the west end of Toronto that is City-owned but totally unmaintained. In a sea of pernicious weeds and black locust tree volunteers, I have planted three beds for my Sedges Instead project. Digging a trowel into this compacted “soil” gave me the worst blister I’ve ever had.

And yet the native plants, mainly sedges, interspersed with some native pollinator plants, are thriving, thanks to their inherent toughness and the watering that neighbours across the street are kind enough to do.

One of the Sedges Instead beds.

I’m beginning to wonder if any site is truly impossible!

Native Plant Books by Indigenous Knowledge-Keepers

For most of the 30 years that I’ve been writing books about native plant gardening, I’ve participated in the settler erasure of Indigenous knowledge by neither engaging with nor acknowledging the millennia of wisdom held by Inidgenous communities and knowledge keepers.

In the past few years, I’ve been learning from Indigenous writers’ books and from Indigenous earth-workers. The following are just a few of the books I’ve been learning from:

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: I am always reading this book! I think I’m on my fourth session with it…The subtitle opens up so much: “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” Weaving stories and science, grounded in love, this book celebrates reciprocity and deep, respectful relationship with the earth and all the beings with whom we share this home.

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask, edited by Wendy Makoons Geniusz

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask, edited by Wendy Makoons Geniusz: Written by the editor’s late mother, this book shares Anishinaabe teachings about plants, not as individual “specimens” but as woven in a richy animate fabric. Full of stories, cultural teachings, information about medicines, and with a section of recipes, this is a book to return to over and over.

Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use, by Christi Belcourt

Medicines to Help Us: Traditional Métis Plant Use, by Christi Belcourt: Honouring the personality and spirit of each plant, in this gorgeous full-colour book artist Christ Belcourt explores the 27 plants in her painting Medicines to Help Us, sharing traditional Métis medicinal knowledge and the healing power of these wild plants. The book includes an essay by Elder Rose Richardson.

Community Help

One of the most gratifying things about my Sedges Instead project is the way that neighbours have become involved.

Baillie, who first told me about this boulevard and how perfect it would be for Sedges Instead, offered me the use of her outdoor tap, about 100 feet away. Lugging watering cans takes some time, but I’m grateful, as are the young seedlings.

Florinda, who lives right across the street from the Sedges Instead project and who has a gorgeous flower garden, drags her hose to the sidewalk whenever she sees me, and together we shower the sedge beds from across the street—causing a few people in cars to wonder why it’s “raining” as they pass.

Another fellow came over with a packet of Heavenly Blue Morning Glory seeds and planted them in a concrete planter on the wall.

Mike, who lives a block away, was curious about who to speak with at the City so he could do something similar.

Sahar, who just moved into a house on the street, would like to adopt a section of the boulevard for vegetable growing.

I’m hopeful that by next year, this neglected boulevard will be full of people tending public plantings!

The boulevard in May, prior to creating the Sedges Instead beds.

A Day of Damage

Tending to public spaces is often uncertain work. Arrived at the Portland Place Pollinator Patch today to find that a branch of the young redbud tree had been snapped off and two sections of the garden trampled down.

There were empty alcohol bottles nearby, and I think someone passed out on the plants.

Here’s how this patch looked a few weeks ago, pre-trampling.

A reminder, if one were needed, that nobody and nowhere is okay until everyone is okay.

Small Space Gardening

I’m inspired every time I go past this planting.

Such lush food production from a small space on a busy street.

Suggested Sedges

It amazes me that native sedges aren’t more widely known and planted in gardens. What’s not to love?!

Little fountains of cascading grass-like foliage, so tidy. Zero effort required for them to flourish. Super habitat value, hosting the larvae of various butterflies and moths, and supporting many beneficial insects.

The sedge revolution requires that we all start asking for these wonderful plants at nurseries!

Here are a few of my favourites.

Bristle-leaved sedge (Carex eburnea)

Bristle-leaved sedge (Carex eburnea)

Height: 6 in to 12 in

Flowers: greenish white

Blooming period: spring

Exposure: shade to sun

Soil: regular

Bristle-leaved sedge is a fantastic addition to the woodland garden. Growing is tidy, rounded clumps, with thin, narrow leaves, it looks great when planted in masses along the woodland border. The flowers are small, on spikes, as are the seedheads, which persist through winter and produce tiny black seeds.

Plantain-leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea)

Plantain-leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea)

Height: 1 ft

Flowers: yellowish green

Blooming period: mid-spring

Exposure: shade to partial shade

Soil: regular to moist

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for Appalachian brown butterfly

If you’re looking for a low-growing, grass-like plant as a groundcover in shade, this perennial, clump-forming sedge is an excellent choice. Its leaves are unusually wide for a sedge, with distinctive veins, and are often evergreen, persisting over winter. Other attractive features are the reddish-purple sheaths and the small but distinctive flowers in mid-spring, which stand erect, emerging above the leaves. Wind-pollinated, the plant spreads vegetatively.

Fox Sedge (Carex vulpinoidea)

Fox sedge (Carex vulpinoidea)

Height: 1.5 ft to 3.5 ft

Flowers: green to golden and brown

Blooming period: late spring to early summer

Exposure: sun to partial sun

Soil: moist to wet

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for broad-winged skipper, mulberry skipper, two-spotted skipper, black dash, dion skipper, duke’s skipper, eyed brown, grass-miner moth, tufted sedge moth

 Like many sedges, this one requires moist conditions and is grown in gardens mainly for its foliage, which form dense tufts of narrow leaves. Useful in rain gardens, where it tolerates flooding, it can spread to form colonies.

Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica)

Height: 6 in to 1 ft

Flowers: creamy green

Blooming period: mid- to late spring

Exposure: shade to sun

Soil: regular to dry; drought tolerant

Specialist pollinator interactions: larval host for Elachista argentosa moth, Elachista madarellamoth

A great choice for dry, shady conditions, this clump-forming perennial sedge is low-growing, forms attractive, arching tufts, and doesn’t take any work to maintain. It takes on a purplish cast when in bloom, and is cross-pollinated by wind, also producing clonal colonies. It does best in humus-rich soil high in organic matter.

More sedge profiles to come in a future post!

Hello Sedges

The three Sedges Instead beds are now planted on a neglected public boulevard in the west end of Toronto (near Lansdowne and Dundas)! The native sedges I’ve included are Plantain-leaved Sedge (Carex plantaginea), Pennsylvania Sedge (Carex pensylvanica), Graceful Sedge (Carex gracilis), and Fox Sedge (Carex vulpinoidea).

I’ve interspersed some native wildflowers as well. Whenever passersby see me working and stop to talk, they always say that they hope there will be flowers. And they always lament the fact that the City doesn’t maintain the boulevard!

Plant Source Matters!

There are so many reasons why native plant specialty nurseries are the best places to buy native plants, and I was recently reminded of one particularly important reason.

In the spring, native woodland plants started to appear at regular nurseries under the label “Ontario Natives.” I didn’t get picky about the fact that some of them weren’t Ontario natives (e.g. yellow trillium, Trillium luteum). But I was intrigued because many of the plants for sale with the “Ontario Natives” label are species that are hard to find for sale even at native plant nurseries: woodlanders such as trilliums, Jack-in-the-pulpit, hepatica, blue cohosh, turk’s cap lily, etc. Most importantly, these are species that are often wild-dug, in the U.S., a practice that depletes wild populations.

So, going into Nancy Drew mode, I started to investigate.

What I found out—or, rather, didn’t find out—spoke volumes.

The “Ontario Natives” line is distributed by Sipkens Nurseries to a number of nurseries in Ontario (not to specialty native plant nurseries, as far as I know, but to general nurseries). When I contacted Sipkens with very specific questions, I was given general answers.

I asked if the plants were grown in the U.S. and potted up here, and was told, “Some are grown from seed and division in our nursery while others are purchased from another nursery grower. None are from wild harvesting.”

I followed up three times (April, May and August) re-asking my question about specific species they sell and whether or not they come from a U.S. sourse.

Sipkens didn’t answer. Yet knowing the answer is of interest and importance to native plant gardeners who 1) don’t want “native plants” grown in Texas, for example, with genetics that might make them less fit in Ontario and might cross with locally adapted species; 2) want a meaningful guarantee right from the source (“another nnursery grower”) that the plants are not wild-dug.

Sipkens didn’t answer.

One more reason to buy your native plants from local native plant nurseries! They will answer your questions about source and genetic provenance.

For a list of local native plant nurseries, visit the North American Native Plant Society website, www.nanps.org or join the Facebook group Ontario Native Plant Gardeners, or check out the Halton Master Gardeners’ list: https://haltonmastergardeners.com/2020/03/28/native-plants-nurseries-in-ontario/