Yet, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, Whitefish Bay officials shot down one resident’s request to install a free library in his front yard. There are hundreds of such “little free libraries” on private residences in Wisconsin, and thousands more around the globe. The structure resembled a mini-chapel, but was filled with books available to all comers, free of charge. Last fall, the village of Whitefish Bay, Wisc., ordered a church to remove a mailbox-like structure on its front lawn. For homeowners who think otherwise, and who live in places where front-yard gardens aren’t prohibited, take note of tips for landscaping a yard so it’s both beautiful and edible. The anti-garden forces say that raised beds and veggies are unsightly and should remain strictly backyard affairs. ( MORE: The Bigger Box Store: Home Improvement Centers That Are Double the Size of Home Depot) Officials in West Des Moines, Iowa, considered a front-yard garden ban recently, and a woman in the summer of 2011 Michigan faced 93 days in jail for refusing to dig up her garden. And yet, as the New York Times detailed last December, gardeners-who “aren’t generally known for their civil disobedience”-have been ordered by local code enforcers to get rid of front-yard veggie gardens in places such as Orlando, Fla., Tulsa, Okla., and Ferguson, Mo. Given America’s obesity epidemic, it seems odd that any community would risk being called anti-vegetable. On the front-yard prohibited list are things such as: The code enforcers around the country have recently targeted everything from tree houses to lemonade stands, and even if outright bans aren’t in place, homeowners are facing the annoyance of getting permits or variances just to do what they please on their own properties. Towns and residential communities ban all sorts of things from appearing in front yards, and by most accounts, enforcement of the rules is picking up. Follow because it’s your property doesn’t mean you can do anything you’d like with it.
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