I live near downtown Indianapolis in one of its developing neighborhoods. Read "developing" as some really nice old houses, intermixed with many more houses (and yards) in various states of disrepair. I've lived in the neighborhood for about 8 years now and have put in some serious time into the garden. When I bought the house the landscaping consisted of weedy lawn, 2 very overgrown cedars in too small of a space, 5 yuccas overcrowding the path to the backyard, and a supposed privet hedge that was 90 percent weedy maples & elms. Since then the 1 of the cedars is gone, along with the yuccas, the hedge, and a fair amount of the lawn. Now there's lots of flowering plants and shrubs around the house & all along one side of the property edge, a big veggie garden, sod couch (literal lawn furniture), pond, rain garden, fire pit, rain barrels, patio and a wonderful native prairie planting in the front yard.

For the past few years, the city's weed ordinance inspectors have tagged me as an "Environmental Nuisance" for having tall grass and weeds in the yard. Sigh. Before installing this planting, I did read the City code on landscaping, and I'm technically not violating anything. Unless the person inspecting doesn't know that asters and big blue stem are not really what they mean by "tall grass & weeds". This year, I think I just barely got the mow ordered canceled--despite my letter, photos, species lists, and map & landscaping design defending my garden. The weed ordinance folks want me to get designated a a "native garden" but have no suggestions on how that can be done. Probably because no such designation exists for private landowners in Indianapolis, as far as I've been able to discover.

Sigh. This is crazy frustrating. I have plans next year to remove some of the red-twig dogwood hedge closest to the sidewalk, and planting some much lower growing stuff, but I'm not sure this will satisfy the inspectors.

Any folks out there who've successfully dealt with something like this? Or just some general commiserating?

I've probably going to cross-post this to the Natives forum, in hopes that some other person has solved such a problem.

Thanks!

If your yard does look weedy from the road, you might be able to make it look well-kept without making too many changes. Maybe you could post a photo in one of the forums to get suggestions on what you could do. Asking in the Natives forum is a good idea and also, the perennials forum might be a good place to ask since it's pretty active. I realize of course that your yard may look wonderful and you just have a nasty neighbor that would complain no matter what. If you can get certified that will help with that problem. Best of luck.