Young Couple Fights Fort Worth City Hall & Wins The Right To Have A Yard Requiring No Watering

Young Couple On Criminal Yard

This afternoon I read an article in this week's Fort Worth Weekly, titled As Long as the Grass Should Grow, about the young couple you see in the picture and their 5 year battle with the Corrupt City of Fort Worth, a battle which the young couple won.

For now.

The battle with the city was over this young couple's landscaping.

The young couple's house sits across the street from the Tandy Hills Natural Area. So, they landscaped their yard with the same natural plants that grow in the natural area.

Including native grasses.

The yard has never been an overgrown jungle. The edges are trimmed, and part of the yard is conventionally grassed.

I have seen this particular yard many times whilst driving by on my way to hike the Tandy Hills. I have long made note of how nice this yard looks, how natural it looks and how well it fits in with its setting.

5 years ago an anonymous neighbor anonymously complained to the city that the young couple's grass was too tall.

I really am starting to develop a dislike for all the anonymous complainers out there in the world anonymously complaining about matters that really are none of their anonymous business.

The young couple got a ticket for having grass taller than a foot. The ticket was contested, with the judge siding with the city and the anonymous complainer, with the young couple fined $315.

After years of court time, on December 7, 2011 a Tarrant County Criminal Court Judge reversed the original judgment.

The city is now working towards re-working the inept wording of its codes as they pertain to property owner's landscaping.

Now, where this really bugs me is this is a city which employs someone to look like Sherlock Holmes who calls himself the Lawn Whisperer, to encourage people to conserve water used on their landscaping.

The yard of the young couple, who got fined, is Xeriscaped to a fine tuned level, requiring no watering.

One would think a city, with even a little common sense, would ally this young couple with the Lawn Whisperer to show other yard owners in Fort Worth how to replicate their water saving success.

This is a city, with a government which turns a blind eye to all the various depredations the Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drilling Industry foists upon the landscape of Fort Worth.

Gas Drillers in Fort Worth can put up a roadblock on a Fort Worth road, forcing motorists to detour, with no threat of a fine possible.

I daily see a giant, ugly brown wall, that I call Fort Chesapeake, that hovers over my neighborhood like a metaphor for a city gone mad. $315 fine because someone has some tall grass. A blind eye to multiple ugly brown wall eyesores.

Gas Drillers in Fort Worth suck copious amounts of water out of the Trinity River, with nary a peep from the Lawn Whisperer. And with the shills in charge making ridiculous claims that the millions of gallons sucked by the gas drillers are just a teeny fraction of what all those lawn watering water wasters waste.

And then this corrupt town has a young couple, trying to be good citizens, setting a good example, doing a good thing.

Using no precious water to water their yard.

And they get fined.

I'm surprised they didn't get tasered and taken to jail.

The nerve.

Growing a natural yard across from a natural area.