Natural-lawn advocate contests yard citation

HARTFORD, Conn. — To Maggie Redfern, her allnatural front yard is a rebuke to the chemical-soaked, manicured lawns of suburban America. To some of her neighbors in New London, Connecticut, it’s an eyesore.

Ordered by the city’s blight officer to cut back overgrowth, Redfern is challenging local ordinances in a case that has rallied likeminded conservationists.

At a city hearing on her appeal this week, her supporters held signs that read: “Hell no we won’t mow.”

“I think this is a growing movement that a lot of people are becoming aware of,” Redfern said in an interview Wednesday. “My hope is we can spread the word to encourage other people to help the environment.”

The issue was professional for her until it became personal.

Redfern, an assistant director at the Connecticut College arboretum, organizes an annual conference there on the Smaller American Lawns Today movement. The campaign was launched in the 1990s by a college botany professor to help restore lawns to more natural landscapes.

The front yard of Redfern’s home where she’s lived for nearly two years is filled mainly by fescue grass along with trees, shrubs and a pollinator garden. She said she does not let just anything grow and regularly removes noxious weeds, including mugwort and bittersweet.

She said she thinks her yard looks good compared to other lawns and it is better ecologically.

“With what we have learned about the natural world there is really a good case for not using fossil fuels and pesticides and clean drinking water to have a short lawn,” she said.

The property came under city scrutiny after a next-door neighbor complained about the height of the hedges at the property line. City blight officer Kenyon Haye listened to her explanations for keeping the yard the way she did, but ultimately issued a letter directing that all plant overgrowth be cut back to 10 inches (25.4 centimeters). The city code leaves exceptions for cultivated flowers.

“My job is to enforce the laws on the books,” Haye said Thursday. “My personal preferences aren’t weighed in.”

WESTERLY, R.I. — A mysterious metal object discovered a few weeks ago off a Rhode Island beach has been removed and carted away in pieces.

Media tweets show a crew used an excavator Thursday on Westerly’s East Beach to dig up the circular metal object.

The object puzzled beachgoers and had posed a hazard to swimmers. All that could be seen until its removal were several metal legs and concrete. Taylor Swift’s oceanfront mansion overlooks the beach.

The object came up in pieces Thursday. Its metal pieces were several feet long, and wires were running through them.

Oceanographers previously told a beach association that the object could be a device to monitor currents and sediment flow.