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.