Native Gardening Resources

Introduction

We bought our fixer-upper in Silver City not only facing an extensive, full renovation project on the house but with the intention of rehabilitating the yard into native habitat. The practice is not uncommon in our small town, however, we faced legal challenges to our efforts that were initiated by a neighbor who complained to code enforcement.

The whole ordeal is a very long and complicated story I’ll get to documenting here one day. The big take-away for now is that we knew we were unjustly charged and challenged it. We spent a tremendous amount of time and energy defending ourselves over the course of more than five months before the citation was eventually dismissed, with prejudice, by the court.

In the process of defending ourselves, we gathered a substantial library of evidence and supporting resources. In the hopes of helping others, we’ve compiled some of those resources here.

If you know of anything that could be added, please leave a link in the comments so we can continue to build this library and support the native gardening movement.

Table of Contents

Native Gardening Information

There is a wealth of information online about gardening and landscaping with native plants that can’t possibly be catalogued here. These are just a few of the resources we found useful.

• Monarch Gardens
  • Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design (Amazon affiliate link)
  • Garden Guides
• Noxious and Troublesome Weeds of New Mexico (New Mexico State University)
• Plants of the Gila Wilderness (WNMU Department of Natural Sciences)
• Prairie Up: Unlawning America
• SEINet (Regional Network of North American Herbaria, Southwest Region)
• What is chaos gardening and should we all be trying it? (Home & Garden)
• Your Frequently Asked Questions About Pollinator Gardening At Home (Xerces Society)

Advocacy Resources

Resources and information helpful to citizens and public officials interested in crafting better municipal policies surrounding native landscaping.

• As Natural Landscaping Takes Root We Must Weed Out the Bad Laws – How Natural Landscaping and Leopold’s Land Ethic Collide with Unenlightned Weed Laws and What Must Be Done about It (John Marshall Law Review)
• How to Pass Weed Inspection — A Real Life Story & Guide (Monarch Gardens)
• Is Your Yard Undergrown? (Humane Gardener)
• Natural Landscaping for Public Officials (EPA)
• Nature on Trial: Fighting for Freedom of Choice in Landscaping (Jason Rohrer)
  • The People of the State of New York vs. Jason Rohrer
  • Memorandum of Law in Support of Request for Declaratory Judgment Finding Ordinance to be Unconstitutional
  • Trial Notes (Jason Rohrer)
• Neighborly Natural Landscaping in Residential Areas (Penn State Extension)
• Sample Native Planting Ordinance (Wild Ones)
• Weed Laws Resource List (New Mexico Native Plant Society)
• Weed Ordinances with Rosanne Plante (Wild Ones webinar)
• Weeding Out Bad Vegetation Control Ordinances (ResearchGate)

Legal

General

• A Citizen’s Guide to Municipal Court

New Mexico

• New Mexico FOIA Procedures
• New Mexico Rules of Evidence
• New Mexico Rules of Procedure for the Municipal Courts

Organizations

These are just a handful of the organizations addressing native gardening who also have their own resource lists.

• Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health
• Ecological Landscape Alliance
• National Wildlife Federation
• Homegrown National Park
• New Mexico Native Plant Society
  • Gila Native Plant Society
• North American Native Plant Society
• Wild Ones!
• The Xerces Society

News

Articles featuring us

• America’s Most Boring Association Is Fighting the Planet (WIRED feat. Val Weston and J. Brandon)
• The lawyer who fights for people’s right to grow ‘weeds’ (The Washington Post feat. Val Weston and J. Brandon)

Other stories

• Goodbye to grass? More Americans embracing ‘eco-friendly’ lawns and gardens (PBS News)
• Is it a weed patch, or a garden? ‘Cues to care’ clue in neighbors, passersby (The Ann Arbor News)
• Kansas City Man’s Plea For Native Flower Justice Unites Gardeners Around The World (KCUR | NPR)
• Native Landscapes Can Be Hard to Plant. But Help Is Here. (New York Times)
• New Smithsonian Study Links Declines in Suburban Backyard Birds to Presence of Nonnative Plants (Smithsonian)
• They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn’s Done. (New York Times)
• Valiant couple’s ferocious lawn feud with heavy-handed HOA leads to change in state law: ‘If they fight back, they can win’ (Yahoo News)

Inspiration

We didn’t set out to be crusaders on this subject but, once faced with the challenge, we recognized the importance of combatting it.

• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable (Luvvie Ajayi Jones, TEDWomen, November 2017)

Silver City

News and information relevant to Silver City residents

• Public Input Heard by SC Town Council (Silver City Daily Press, 10/15/2010)
• Bird, Bee, and Butterfly Friendly Day in Silver City Proclamation (Town of Silver City, 4/10/2018)
• Municipal Court Helps Residents with Town’s Laws (Silver City Daily Press, 4/22/2019)
• Silver Council Looks to Become Nuisance Board (Silver City Daily Press, 2/9/2022)
• Silver Council Approves New Nuisance Ordinance (Silver City Daily Press, 3/9/2022)
• Silver City Animal Law Revisions Spark Heat (Silver City Daily Press, 4/26/2024)
• General Order 5.26: Body Worn Cameras (Silver City Police Department)