Sometimes the best way to push back is to get someone bigger on your side.

What would you do if your city accused you of neglecting your garden, even though you kept it clean and intentionally wild for the sake of the local ecosystem? Would you cave to pressure? Or would you find a way to keep it and get the city off your back?

In the following story, one homeowner deals with this very situation and decides to fight for their gardens. Here’s the story.

The city wanted me to take better care of my gardens, so I had them approved by the local nature conservation association

My house is surrounded by two gardens, one in the front, facing the street, and one in the back, bordering my neighbours’ gardens.

When my parents and grandparents moved into our house 26 years ago, they planted a thick hedge around the entire property. They also installed a rose arch over the pathway to our front door, and my grandfather was always busy keeping up the garden, planting, weeding, and keeping everything very tidy.

My grandfather died in 2002, and after that, the garden was neglected for a few years as my parents were still working and my brother and I were in university/school.

To help nature, their mother started caring for the gardens.

However, around 2005, my mum read that we should plant certain things to help the bees, and she took over the gardens, planting lilac, rhododendron, roses, and various berries. Later, we decided to also install raised garden beds with various kitchen herbs.

My mum is now over 70 years old and has officially transferred the house to my brother and me, so that we won’t be taxed on inheriting it when she passes away.

Since then, I’ve been sporadically taking care of the gardens. I like them in their wild shape with all the birds, bees, bumblebees, and butterflies flying around, in autumn we get hedgehogs and we’ve been visited by a fox recently (which sends my cats into a panic).

Apparently, the city wasn’t so fond of their hedges.

Then, recently, we received a letter from the city stating that our garden was interfering with the safety of the street, because the hedge was overgrowing the pavement and contained poisonous berries, which were a danger to children.

Now, my brother trims the hedge every month to make sure nothing is overgrowing the pavement in any way, and while the berries are poisonous, to get to them, you’d have to be quite resilient because they’re surrounded by thorns.

They are also known to be ideal food for some local birds.

Thankfully, someone saw the benefit of protecting them.

So, I contacted our local nature conservation association and asked if they would like to have a look at our gardens and maybe tell us if we could improve anything to make them even more nature-friendly.

They came, looked around, and then told us they rarely see gardens so in touch with nature.

They approved our gardens as “especially nature friendly” and contacted the city to tell them that, from their point of view, any changes would be considered unfriendly to nature, and since our city prides itself on once being one of the “green capitals” in our country, they had to budge.

Don’t mess with my gardens!

Nice! It’s great to see that someone else cared.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about this.

Here’s someone who also loves their garden.

This person has a great philosophy.

According to this person, people tear out nature to replace it with “nature.”

For this reader, children should know better anyway.

Thank goodness for those people!

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.