One Woman's Quest To Get Back Her Vegetable Garden Results In New Florida Law By Laurel Wamsley • Jul 4, 2019 Originally published on July 4, 2019 7:54 pm Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit Home Page Top Stories. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: A new law went into effect in Florida this week. It says local ordinances can't prohibit residents from planting vegetable gardens. And if that sounds pretty specific for a state law, that's because it was inspired by one woman's pursuit of the freedom to cultivate. NPR's Laurel Walmsley reports. LAUREL WAMSLEY, BYLINE: Hermine Ricketts lives in south Florida, and she loves to eat the food she grows. She showed NPR around the garden in front of her house in Miami Shores a few years ago. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST) HERMINE RICKETTS: This is a peach tree that I put in, and around it, I had kale, Chinese cabbage and I also had yellow Swiss chard. WAMSLEY: Ricketts is 63, and she's a retired architect. Her garden was architectural, too, mixing flowers, fruits and vegetables in a curving design where the only grass was the pathways through it. That is, until one day in 2013. RICKETTS: A code inspector came into my garden that I've had for over 17 years and told me I had to remove my vegetables. WAMSLEY: It turns out that the village had made a rule that vegetable gardens are permitted in rear yards only, meaning that her front yard garden wasn't allowed. The inspector told her she'd be fined $50 a day until she removed the vegetables. But Ricketts looked out at her garden and she wanted to know what exactly counted as a vegetable. She pressed village officials for a list of what she couldn't grow, but they wouldn't tell her. RICKETTS: I pointed out to them that I could go outside the front door of their village hall and pick the flowers from a hibiscus tree and eat the flower. So they have edible plants in their front yard. But they ignore that. They figured the only thing that was edible is what they could find in a supermarket. WAMSLEY: She took her issue to the village board where her vegetables got a grilling. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Do you have vegetables? RICKETTS: Yes. I have vegetables. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK. Are you cultivating these vegetables? WAMSLEY: Ricketts had no choice but to uproot her garden. She also reached out to Institute for Justice, a group that fights for property rights among other libertarian causes. ARI BARGIL: It simply makes no sense to ban somebody from growing vegetables on their own property. WAMSLEY: Ari Bargil is the attorney who took on Ricketts' case. He filed a lawsuit against Miami Shores to strike down the vegetable ban as unconstitutional, arguing that it was arbitrary and irrational. BARGIL: Bear in mind, the village allowed people to grow fruit, flowers. You could have garden gnomes. You could have pretty much anything under the sun in your front yard in Miami Shores except vegetables. WAMSLEY: But they lost in appeals court, and the state Supreme Court wouldn't take up the case. By then, Ricketts' vegetable patch was famous, and a couple of Republican state legislators took up her cause, introducing a bill that would pre-empt any local bans on vegetable gardens on residents' properties. The bill passed with bipartisan support, but not everyone is happy. Scott Dudley is legislative director at the Florida League of Cities, which opposed the bill. SCOTT DUDLEY: It's a local decision. It's not something that should be decided by the legislature. WAMSLEY: He says that more and more when legislators don't like something in one city, they move to pre-empt it at the state level. DUDLEY: The local community knows what they want the character of that community to look like. And they may not want cornfields in your front yard. WAMSLEY: Last week, Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law six years after this veggie tale began. Ricketts had won, but time has been hard on her health, and she uses a wheelchair now. So this week, friends helped her plant a new garden. They put in peppers, tomatoes, squash and okra. Ricketts says her hope is that more people will plant vegetables instead of grass. RICKETTS: And if they don't have enough sunlight or space in their backyard, they can consider using their front yard. WAMSLEY: Now in Miami Shores, they can. Laurel Wamsley, NPR News. (SOUNDBITE OF OL' DIRTY BASTARD'S "SHIMMY SHIMMY YA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. ShareTweetEmail © 2019 WHQR 254 North Front Street, Suite 300, Wilmington, NC 28401 910.343.1640 Contact Us WHQR on Facebook WHQR on Twitter FCC Public Inspection Files MORE One Woman's Quest To Get Back Her Vegetable Garden Results In New Florida Law
Take that you Tyrants. Take this home grown carrot and stick it where the sun don't shine! Now get the flock out of my front yard garden.
Had some whinny lil dude tell me a couple of months ago I needed permit to clean out a drainage culvert on my property next to the RR crossing... I simply told him to stick his permit where the sun don't shine. Lol
the idea behind permits is pretty lame... and IMHO just another attempt at gaining more control over the population... yet there SEEMS to often be a reasoning behind such things... which is often... for your own good kinda thing... while i can see some of em and they SEEM to make sense... I'm old and was taught long ago if you are going to do a thing... learn about it FIRST... and then give it your best... thing is now a days... too many of our young folk are not taught such things... and NEED directions... or someone gets hurt or dead... cause they don't learn how... most don't even try... there are still some that are wise... and seek out information and even training... so....
I am torn on this one because about 3/4ths of the residential urban gardens I see look like this........ Which is great if that is what you want, but honestly do you want to live nest door to that? Does the neighbors overgrown weed patch have the right to decrease everyone elses property values? I can see both sides of the argument and it is a bit bigger issue than evil local Governments just being mean to its residents. Easy answer is don't live in town and ain't nobody going to bother you .......... well bother you much anyway.
I worked with my local State legislator to get a common sense law passed about lumber. Most building codes will only allow grade stamped lumber to be used in construction. Took 2 years, but Tennessee now has a Native Species law....if the timber grows in Tennessee, it can be sawed on a local mill and used in construction without a grade stamp and no building code official can reject it.......just like it's been done for 200 years. Kinda silly to have to import crappy lumber from the west coast and Canada simply because large mills can grade questionable lumber.
That’s really cool right there. Will they allow local sawmill lumber for a residential home,, or just for outbuildings, barns , sheds and stuff.
For residential home. Was allowed for agricultural/non-code buildings before. We're not the first State to do this, several northern/midwestern States have had one for years.
In all my years of owning a sawmill I often wondered why it was not "legal" for my lumber to be used in residential construction. It was perfectly legal to use for barns and outbuildings and such but not in your house or any building that required blue prints or permits. Alan
-"Is some durp actually payed to go around checking lumber with or without stamps?" Yup. Code enforcement Officer in the local gov.
Any government idiot that tells me what I can and can't grow on my property will end up as fertilizer!
