Homeowners associations are supposed to keep neighborhoods looking nice, but their long lists of rules can sometimes make a simple landscaping choice feel like a major battle.

Picture owning a home and being told that the row of sunflowers you planted has to be removed. If the rules banned sunflowers but accidentally allowed something much uglier, would you give up on your garden or use that loophole to make the HOA reconsider?

In this story, one determined homeowner consults a lawyer, takes some massive cornstalk action, and quickly gives the HOA a reason to negotiate.

Let’s see if this gardening gamble will work.

Won’t let me plant sunflowers? Fine.

This is my favorite lawyer story.

Client walks into the office and asks us for a contract review. He then hands over an HOA contract. Before slogging through a whole HOA contract, I asked him what he was hoping to accomplish.

“They want me to dig up my sunflowers.”

“Your… sunflowers?”

Someone had beef with their sunflowers.

“Yes, I planted a row of sunflowers outside my house. They pranced by and said that sunflowers are not allowed per the contract I signed. So I want you to tell me if that is true or not.”

“Sir, before anything else I need to tell you that this will likely be an hourly fee bill. HOAs are notorious for dragging things out. So these could quickly become expensive sunflowers.”

“I don’t care. This is America and I should be able to plant sunflowers god dammit.”

I agree with the sentiment.

Still thinking he wasn’t that serious about sunflowers, I asked for a three hour retainer.

He immediately pulled out a checkbook and paid for four hours. So I buckled down to review the alleged anti-sunflower clause.

Just for reference, the sunflowers he wanted to plant were really big (5ft) and all along the front of the house. It was a very substantial amount of sunflowers.

The contract did indeed contain a clause, with a very thorough list, on which plants were and were not allowed to be planted.

They really controlled what people could plant.

The list had just about every plant I could think of, in alphabetical order (think apple, banana, cauliflower, dill…).

Sunflowers included.

Corn was not included, which becomes very important later.

Quick legal point – if you write ‘no dogs allowed’ it is normally assumed that you are talking about all dogs generally.

If you write ‘no labs, golden retrievers, or poodles allowed’ it is normally assumed that all other dogs are allowed.

Sometimes, a not great attorney will write a super long list to pad hours (read: charge more) instead of just writing ‘no plants without prior approval’ or something.

But this meant he wasn’t allowed to plant sunflowers.

I called the client back in for the bad news. In explaining the above legal point, I let him know that the HOA got a raw deal from whoever drafted the contract.

“No can do on the sunflowers. But if it makes you feel any better, they were probably overbilled by whoever wrote this contract. Pretty shoddy work too, they even forgot to write down ‘corn’ but they included nonsense like ‘dragon fruit’.”

Interesting information.

“So yes to corn, no to sunflowers?”

“I didn’t really check the contract for corn. But its not prohibited in the plant section, so probably?”

“Excellent. That’ll work.”

I thought he was oddly happy with bad news.

Then two or three weeks later he came in with a picture of his house, surrounded by huge sunflowers.

He found a way to get what he wanted.

What happened? This guy drove out to the country and bought obnoxiously large and ugly cornstalks.

He promptly planted them where the sunflowers had been. When confronted by the HOA he told them (paraphrasing) to “suck it, the contract lets me plant corn”.

Then after some negotiation, he agreed to take the corn down, in exchange for permission to plant sunflowers.

Now we are friends, he is still a great client, and he lives surrounded by a ridiculous moat of sunflowers.

More power to the sunflower!

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader shares their thoughts.

This commenter shares their opinion.

Compliments.

Exactly.

Yup.

Another reader chimes in.

I agree.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who ends up with a problem of their own after calling the city about a shed.

At its core, this story shows how an overly specific rule can create a much bigger headache than the original problem ever would have.

Without that ban on a harmless row of sunflowers, the HOA probably would not have ended up staring at a cinematic monolith of towering cornstalks instead.

From the speed of their turnaround, someone on the board may have finally realized that homeowners can get very creative when the rules leave room for loopholes.

As for me, I would have enjoyed every minute of tending that corn while waiting for the HOA to return with a more reasonable offer!