"Your land" as your own personal little utopia is a fantasy and fiction that's never existed in civilized society and whose continued reference as some sort of ideal is naive at best.

Outside of your 100+ acre "compound" in the middle of nowhere, restrictions on the aesthetics of your property are the norm, ranging from reasonable "you can't pave your front yard and use it as a parking lot" to the extreme "you may choose from these three shades of beige for exterior colors".

"Homeowner's association": restrictive covenants that go with the property purchase.

Originally in America these were often for racial discrimination. Doing so directly was outlawed, but doing so indirectly remains a major function of them.

It's often a voluntary agreement. A developer builds a collection of houses, then sells them under the condition that the owner must join the home owner association set up for those houses. The idea is that the association forces its members to do upkeep, so that the homes don't collectively lose value for being in a "bad neighborhood".

It's very often a city ordinance. I've posted this before, here's the link to my home city's lawn gestapo:

http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_...

That example picture looks perfectly reasonable. If there were a few more flowers it'd be even better.

Get a property in a city and start a tire fire.