A Pointe-Claire family has won a fight against the city after a bylaw change legalized their “naturalized garden.”
Last year, the city issued him a $650 fine and told him the garden — full of tall grass, shrubs and other plants growing wild — was not allowed.
READ MORE: Pointe-Claire garden at the center of growing controversy
The overgrown shrubs and grass may appear to be out of control, but owner Peter Graham says that’s not the case.
“It actually takes a lot of work. To me, the lazy people are those who run the lawnmower or hire somebody to run a lawnmower,” Graham told Global News.
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“That’s being lazy, that’s really being disengaged from your environment entirely.”
Graham is working on a PhD thesis about how changes in human behaviour can help the environment.
“If I can grow a species that’s endangered or threatened or rare, I put that here in the garden. I try to manage it for bio-diversity,” he said.
Pointe-Claire officials said they changed the bylaw with the environment in mind.
“All of these changes were made to promote sustainable development, which is part of our strategic plan to support and contribute to environmental protection,” Mayor Morris Trudeau told Global News.
Graham’s neighbours are divided on the naturalized garden.
READ MORE: Naturalized lawns reduce need for mowing and trimming
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Louise Deserres. “We like our lawn and we take care of it, but he can do whatever he likes.”
“Every year, it’s bigger and bigger. There’s only one thing missing: a monkey,” argued her husband, Gilles Verrette.
He said he wonders if the garden could affect their property value if they were to sell their home.
Graham hopes to start a trend for others to use their lawns to protect species destroyed by urban development.
“It’s just rethinking all that space taken up by a mowed lawn, and making better use of it,” he said.
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