Across Canada and globally, there is growing momentum to mitigate the impacts of climate change and habitat loss on biodiversity. These challenges transcend the jurisdiction of any single government or agency. In response, people across urban areas are increasingly taking action, particularly through landscaping strategies that foster and support biodiversity at home in their gardens. In North American cities, private lands make up a significant and often majority of the urban matrix. As such, private lands offer opportunities to address anthropogenic socio-environmental impacts in cities in ways that complement municipal initiatives on public lands. Specifically, rewilding initiatives on private lands, in yards and gardens, present a tangible solution to renaturalize and connect larger urban ecological networks, while benefiting human wellbeing by nurturing new human-nature relations. Despite this opportunity, there exists ongoing conflict at the municipal scale between municipal-wide environmental goals, the bylaws that regulate landscaping on private property, and the freedom to cultivate support for nature through rewilding efforts in gardens. This paper centers on a pivotal case study in Ontario, Canada: the Hillcrest Meadow, a rewilded habitat garden, in west-midtown Toronto. For over a decade, the garden has been cultivated, stewarded, and maintained by the property owners. In 2020, the Hillcrest Meadow became the focus of media and public attention when the City of Toronto ordered the garden to be cut down, charging the owners with a violation of Toronto’s Long Grass and Weeds Bylaw (as it was then known), Chapter 489 of the City’s Municipal Code. This case is exemplary of many others across North America, and served as the catalyst for the Bylaws for Biodiversity (2021-2025) (B4BD) research project undertaken by the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. Initiated in response to the Notice of Violation served to the owners of the Hillcrest Meadow, later revealed a much greater issue of contradictory municipal biodiversity strategies and rewilding initiatives, and the regulation of gardens and landscaping on private property through municipal codes and bylaws, across public policies in Canada and the U.S. This paper uses the Hillcrest Meadow as a case study to introduce how property maintenance bylaws and municipal enforcement action in practice act as barriers to biodiversity and to the cultivation of rewilded gardens on private property across North American cities. This study draws from the insights that emerged as a result of the Hillcrest Meadow case, built upon policy analyses, interviews with subject matter experts, and experiential knowledge. The paper concludes by synthesizing the key findings into practical, evidence-based recommendations to inform future practice and policy development.
Recommended Citation
Lister, Nina-Marie and Careri, Sabrina
(2025)
"Beyond the Lawn: Bylaws for Biodiversity - Evidence-Based Recommendations for Future Practice and Policy Development,"
Cities and the Environment (CATE):
Vol. 18:
Iss.
1, Article 8.
DOI: 10.15365/cate.2025.180108
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cate/vol18/iss1/8
DOI
10.15365/cate.2025.180108
