It frustrates me that even though I am not in a HOA area, I cannot do this without getting letters from the city and fines. They will come mow my lawn for me and then charge me if I don't keep them mowed. Even my back yard which is almost 100% enclosed. I rent, otherwise I would build a wall right against my neighbors property so they wouldn't call the city on me for being able to see through a 5 foot gap into the back yard. I try to be considerate and keep the front and side clean but they even complained about there being too much wildlife back there (as if that was a bad thing). I usually have a whole bunny family living back there with birds and lots of bugs but eventually I have to mow it or have it mowed for me at my expense.

Where the heck do you live? I'm in a small town in the south east coast of the US. I'm pretty sure our city crew would get fired (or shot) here for trying to forcibly mow someone's yard without their consent.

A decent sized city in the south east, its a common complaint around here but other people have done more to fight it. Since I don't own I haven't really pushed it but if I did I think I would. My guess is that it all has to do with property values, if I built a nice garden in the front lawn and it looked great it would be fine. Letting it just grow up not so much which is why I limit it to the back yard but my uptight neighbors don't want to be next to wildlife.

I live in a large town in the southeast and that is indeed our county's policy: http://www.pinellascounty.org/code-enforcement/enforcement-c...

That said, "Florida friendly landscaping" (creating a yard that can adequately handle Florida's natural irrigation, which is not necessarily grass oriented) has been steadily growing in support. In fact, it's actually illegal for an HOA to prevent a Florida friendly landscape (https://www.volusia.org/core/fileparse.php/4163/urlt/HOAs.pd...), although in practice a lot of HOAs still enforce a "thou must have a large thirsty St. Augustine grass front lawn" code.

The key word is 'I rent'. Rental properties can be subject to more restrictions than owner-occupied properties and people who care enough to complain to the city (generally homeowners calling on rental properties) know when the laws of a jurisdiction is in their favor.

Where I live, the city has the power to abate nuisances, which involves notifying the property owner with a period of time given to bring the cited issue into compliance. If the property owner fails to correct the issue, city workers correct it and the property owner is billed an (outrageous) hourly rate, minimum 1 hour.

I'm not sure that it makes that much of a difference, the city doesn't seem to care who reads the letter or who pays the fine but it does affect how much I fight it and what I can do to get around it.

I wish there was a way to make it popular for people to let their yard grow wild and make it taboo to mow your lawn.

Ha! That's easy. In California, we call that "drought". A couple of years ago, having a green lawn was Extremely Incorrect in my neighborhood.

Yep, dead lawns and waist-high weeds. See it all the time. No nuisance enforcement. Although after the fast-spreading fires, I wonder if that will change?

That's how my backyard is and I love it. I clear some dead plant matter and don't barbecue things. I do have a solar stove that uses a parabolic reflector and prefer using it to the gas grill now.