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Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The city then sent out code enforcement.

City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.

"That's not what we want to see in a front yard," said Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what's "suitable?"

"If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers," the city bureaucrat said.

It just doesn't get more ridiculous than this. Julie Bass of Oak Park, Michigan -- a mother of 6, law-abiding citizen, and gardener -- is facing 93 days in jail after being charged with a misdemeanor. Her crime? Planting a vegetable garden in the front yard.

An Orlando man is fighting city officials to keep his vegetable garden in his front yard. You have to step over radishes, wax beans and kale to get to Jason Helvingston's front door in College Park. However, his 25 x 25 foot micro-irrigated vegetable garden is against city code, and the city of Orlando has asked Helvingston to dig it up by Wednesday.

The Michigan woman facing 93 days in jail for front yard gardening now faces new charges for having unlicensed dogs.

In Orange County, California, the city is suing a couple who replaced their front lawn with wood chips to save water. Article includes great quotes like:
“Compliance -- that’s all we’ve ever wanted,” explained City Atty. Wayne Winthers.
“It’s just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,” Quan Ha said.

Husband tries to keep deceased wife's wishes by being buried in the front yard. The city is trying to move the grave site.

A three year old gets his mom in trouble with the law when he gets a ticket from police. Now the little boy's mother will have to pay thousands of dollars for what the toddler did in their own front yard.

Neatly trimmed lawns and fixed picket fences could soon be the order of the day for not only homeowners in New York, but across America, if they want to avoid hefty fines and even jail time. In January, Linda Ruggles, 53, from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was sentenced to ten days in jail after failing to pay a $480 fine for a having a messy yard. A month later, a Florida man was reportedly sentenced to a year and one day in jail after he failed to remove litter from the front of his house.