A front yard usually comes with an unspoken suburban assignment: grass, a few shrubs, maybe a tree that behaves itself. Michael Sherman of Chino, California, had a different idea, turning his lawn into a productive food forest filled with passionfruit, radishes, calendulas, sunflowers, aloe vera, Swiss chard and banana trees. His HOA initially approved the garden in writing, but a later board took a different position, and the dispute eventually reached city code enforcement, which issued Sherman $750 in fines.
The story raises a fascinating question for anyone who would rather harvest dinner than mow another patch of grass: What happens when a productive garden collides with the rules governing a neighborhood? It also offers a useful gardening lesson, because a food forest can look wonderfully abundant while creating legitimate concerns about maintenance, visibility and pests if the gardener lets things get too wild. Sherman’s situation shows why gardeners need more than good soil and a packet of seeds when they transform a highly visible part of a property.
