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Comment by gmoes | Hacker News Reader

I have anecdotal experience with this. I used to have dense native plants in my yard. My local municipality made me cut them all down. The mosquitoes, specifically the invasive Aedes species seemed way worse without the lattice of tall native plants that provided both platforms for jumping spiders and infrastructure web based spiders. My tiny yard created so much spider-space for arachnid and other predators. Too bad I was punished by my local municipality for being so arrogant to want grow native plants. I have massive photographic evidence to this effect. See here: http://opilionesman.blogspot.ca/2017/05/i-wanted-to-share-so...

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What a sad ending. I used to live in Texas where the houses were all very similar, with mono-culture yards that required constant water, fertilizer, and mowing.

I now live in the Bay Area, Oakland specifically, and something I've really come to appreciate here is the lack of any sort of ordinances like you've run into. In fact, having a green grass lawn is frowned upon for all the environmental reasons you call attention to. I bought a house in the Oakland Hills last year and we're surrounded by large trees, native grasses, ferns, and dozens of native or drought tolerant flora. Few of the yards are fenced in, which allow wildlife like deer, foxes, turkeys, coyotes to roam freely between the houses. The trees support dozens of different species of birds. And while there are tons of spiders too, very few mosquitoes. And this is still in a city! And do I have to water it? Fertilize it? Mow it? No. I have a crew come through once or twice a year to clear out overgrowth (required for wildfire safety) and that's all the maintenance that's required.

I really wish more places in our country would allow native plant life to thrive around our cities, we'd all be better for it.

You should see all the empty lots where the houses burned down long ago in places like Flint. The lawns aren't mowed in the summers so they look like wheat fields and wildflowers grow like crazy.

It's a traffic hazard as the intersections have no visibility, nobody will mow because people dump junk in the empty lots and you'll hit bricks or metal and ruin the mower.

> It's a traffic hazard as the intersections have no visibility

That does not sound like an argument against overgrown lawns but for speed limits and road designs that discourage fast driving. Here residential areas intentionally curve their roads so people can't drive fast because visibility is not all that great around house corners anyway.

Welcome to the east bay hills! May I suggest a fun alternative to a standard gardening crew to clear your extra growth:

http://goatsrus.com/contact.htm

From the sound of it, your yard/land is a great fit for their services :)

I know some neighbors use them. Trouble with goats is they don't discriminate much about what they eat, and we do have some things in the garden we'd like to keep :)

I thought Texans love FREEDOM and SF was considered the epitome of environmental regulation -- but it seems in some areas the shoe is on the other foot!

Freedom from the big government, tyranny from the small.

In Austin, xeriscaping is usually welcomed.

And in our Firewise neighborhood, we give people a list of native plants that are more fire-resistant, in case they want them. We also do Home Ignition Zone inspections on a volunteer basis, to help them identify their biggest risk factors.

Out of curiosity, what did this look like from the street?

You should disguise it as manicured landscaping with a few cheap features thrown in to appease the tasteless mulch volcano lovers.

This happens in foreshore native zones: attracting mice and rats attracts their predators: snakes. Though, cats too. Probably only happens when plants reach a certain density, but how to control that?

Hello fellow DMV resident. Where in the area do you hope to find a municipality more tolerant to basic biodiversity? Out towards Harper's Ferry, perhaps?

Wow, sorry to hear that. Beautiful photos, sounds like an amazing yard. Did you move somewhere you can have a wilder lawn?

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