"Late last month, I had the opportunity to discuss my recent book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable, before a Seattle-based group of family and consumer scientists, many of them retired.
During my talk, I focused in part on a series of city ordinances around the country that ban people from gardening in their own front yards.
"Why would any city do this?
How can a city do this?
I hope these people are fighting back!"
One of the most egregious examples I highlighted comes from an ongoing case in Miami Shores, Fla. There, Hermine Ricketts and her husband, Laurence Carroll, had kept a nicely manicured vegetable garden in their front yard for nearly two decades.
Then, in 2013, Miami Shores adopted an ordinance that banned vegetable gardens, and vowed to fine violators each day they failed to comply with the law.
The couple sued, arguing, as a local CBS affiliate put it, "that the ordinance ran afoul of the Florida Constitution, including that it violated their privacy rights and their right to acquire, possess and protect property."
Last year, a Florida state court upheld the vegetable-garden ban, on grounds that aesthetic reasons—the city thinks vegetables are ugly—are sufficient justification for a city to ban vegetable gardens..."
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