First came the threatening letters from city hall: mow your grass or we will and then we'll slap you with a fine.
Mike, a homeowner on Lincoln Avenue south of Washington Park, was dismayed. He didn't consider his lawn overgrown or unkept. In fact, he had nurtured it to look different from his neighbors but still be aesthetically pleasing. Instead of the standard yard with grass two or three inches tall, his presented in waves with blades longer than one foot.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and someone, presumably in the neighborhood, complained. And that's when the city of Springfield became involved.
"Just mowing grass over and over and over seems ridiculous to me. We've normalized pruning this plant every week. If we had bushes or trees and told someone to prune those every week, I don't think it would (happen)," said the homeowner, Mike, who asked that his last name not be published because he works in cybersecurity and wants to maintain a low profile online.
"Somehow grass has become this industrialized landscape that's just kind of unnatural. I was searching for alternatives, and then I came across some plants that worked in our area," he said.
The grass he chose to plant is fescue.
"This is a manicured lawn that's organic," Mike said. "It's naturally weed-inhibiting, drought-tolerant. It takes no synthetic fertilizers."
Despite these positive traits, tension was building between Mike and city hall. An inspector showed up at his house with a measuring stick and then wrote him a letter.
"I got the first letter. And I thought they were mad about some of the seed heads I had popping up. So, I trimmed it," Mike said.
When grass goes to seed, it devotes the bulk of its energy to reproduction and begins to brown. This is why it is important to remove seedheads from ornamental vegetation, Robson said.
"The only maintenance you really do is the seed heads, and you do that in the spring," Mike said. "I don't have a mower. I just have a weed whacker. I tried to call the guy (from city hall) and he was unresponsive. And then he came back. ... He put the stick on the lawn and talked to my neighbor and basically said, 'Well, it's over 10 inches, there's nothing I can do'."
The neighbor, Katie Tice, told Illinois Times she loves Mike's yard.
"I'm supportive. I was actually really surprised that the city made an issue of this," she said. "Some houses closer to the park are pretty grown up. To me, this yard is very, very nice. There's something with the way the fescue grows that chokes out the weeds. My grass is shorter but has more weeds."
After the second visit, Mike said he received another letter saying that the city would send someone out to mow his yard and fine him $250.
At this point, members of the Springfield Civic Garden Club as well as other members of the horticulture community became defenders of the yard.
"That yard is like a great big, fluffy guinea pig," said Greg Pierceall, a retired landscape architecture professor who lives in the neighborhood. "I walked all over that yard, and I didn't see any annual or noxious weeds. It is a work of art."
He added that the lawn fits with the aesthetics of the neighborhood.
Ann Hamilton, a member of the Garden Club, echoed his view.
"It's absolutely lovely," she said. "There are a number of things that I find really appealing about it," noting that fescue grass does not require the use of lawn chemicals.
"We have normalized putting chemicals on our lawns and putting on pesticides and insecticides. All of these things kill the native plants, they kill the native insects. There's an insect apocalypse. Many species are completely extinct now. Many others are on the verge of extinction. And a lot of it is because of lawn chemicals," Hamilton said.
"The two-cycle motors that people use on lawns are very polluting. So that's another environmental problem that's caused by people mowing and having traditional grasses. This type of yard doesn't generate that pollution," she said. Hamilton noted that the fescue grass "provides a habitat for all sorts of creatures, from little insects to bunnies and chipmunks. And it's beautiful."
Ward 8 Ald. Erin Conley, who represents the area, became aware of the dispute and intervened. She said the city will allow the lawn to remain in its present state. The owner only needs to register it as "native landscaping."
"This is just the second complaint I've gotten about a native landscaping. My degree is actually in plant biology," Conley said. "I really enjoy these landscapes, when people take this kind of effort and do something different and unique. It's not what everyone's accustomed to seeing. With a little bit of education, a little bit of outreach (it is an opportunity to) let people understand what's going on. I think it's actually a nice opportunity in that way."
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at sreeder@illinoistimes.com.