Jeff Danna, TribLocal reporter
Dora Lyakhovetsky walked to the microphone at the front of the Northbrook Village Board Room Tuesday evening carrying a basket.
“I have this for you,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”
In the basket were tomatoes from her garden — a garden that has caused a stir in her Northbrook neighborhood.
She attended the village board meeting with her son, Alex Lyakhovetsky, and Northbrook resident Lee Goodman, who addressed the trustees about what he saw as an attempt by the “pretty police” to regulate the appearance of private property.
“This isn’t a garden dispute — this is a neighborhood dispute,” said Goodman, who had circulated a petition in the neighborhood trying to drum up support for Lyakhovetsky’s front yard garden on the 2700 block of Shannon Drive.
Somewhat of a community activist, Goodman told the board his petitioning job had never been so easy. The two people who objected most strenuously to Lyakhovetsky’s garden, he said, did so because they did not like her.
Had someone else planted the garden, perhaps they would not have minded its prominent placement, he said.
“I know you think you can solve this by writing a new law,” Goodman said.
But he said that wouldn’t work because people would just find something else to complain about. Plus, he said, residents clearly don’t want the village to do so.
The garden issue was not up for discussion Tuesday, and Village President Sandy Frum said a formal consideration of the issue would be placed on an agenda within the next month.
The trouble started earlier this summer when the village received complaints about the garden. A village code enforcer responded with a letter to Lyakhovetsky’s son, Alex, who owns the property, stating that the garden must be removed by spring, after this year’s harvest.
Dora Lyakhovetsky, 69, has lived in the home with her son for about eight years. She recently moved the garden from the backyard, where she said large trees blocked the sun.
She grows only two things: flowers and tomatoes, which she gives to friends and family members.
Since the village’s letter arrived, other residents of the 2700 block of Shannon Road have come to her defense, signing a petition stating that they support her garden.
But the support might not be as widespread as Goodman suggested. Rob Holt, who lives around the corner from the Lyakhovetskys on Crestwood Lane, said in an interview before the meeting that he does not support the garden and neither do his neighbors.
He said that if the garden is against village code, the solution is simple: remove it.
“If I wanted to naturalize my front yard and grow buckthorn and thistle, the village wouldn’t let me — they’re invasive species,” Holt said.
“My tomatoes are in my back yard, which aren’t coming in too well,” he added jokingly. “Maybe I should move them to my front yard. But I don’t think I will.”
Charles and Laurie Baum, who also live on Crestwood said in interviews that they also did not approve of Lyakhovetsky’s garden.
Charles Baum said that when he was approached by Greenwood, an acquaintance, he declined to sign the petition.
“He said, ‘Why not?’” Charles Baum said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, Lee, I just don’t think they should have that.’ Sometimes when you live this close together, you have to conform to the neighborhood.”
Laurie Baum said she does not see the Lyakhovetskys out and about in the neighborhood talking to people, and in light of the garden issue, that has led some to question whether they care about the area.
While some people say the Lyakhovetsky garden is clearly in violation of village code, the truth might not be so cut and dry.
“There is no ordinance that specifically deals with a garden in the front yard,” said Tom Poupard, director of community planning and development for the village. “It truly is a gray area.”
Village code does allow for residents to follow a procedure to plant native grasses and other less-typical vegetation, but that provision remains vague.
Village code also requires residents to cut their grass when it reaches 10 inches in height, but that passage, too, does not seem to capture the intricacies of the garden situation, Poupard said.
In a second letter to Alex Lyakhovetsky dated Aug. 27, Poupard asks him to bear with village staff members as they review the code and try to come up with a solution to the issue and any similar ones that may arise throughout Northbrook.
The issue may even be larger than a garden, Poupard and Goodman noted. It seems to get at the heart of the role of the front yard in a suburban community. Some people might see manicured lawns as the ideal, but that standard might be changing.
Goodman told the trustees that activity in front of the house engages people in their communities.
“You ought to be encouraging people to spend time in their front yards,” he said.
Thank you, suburbiansarenuts, for so eloquently stating what is wrong with the “ban everything because it could hurt my property values” crowd. First, there is no evidence that allowing people to use their private property in a manner somewhat differently than their neighbors hurts property values. Second, too many restrictions on the right of property owners to express their individuality can itself hurt property value. Finally, the notion that everything should be about maximizing property values reflects very poorly on the values of that community.
I feel badly for this woman and feel nothing but pity for those in Northbrook who would seek to squelch her tomato garden. If the village leaders of Northbrook were any sillier, they would rival the village leaders of Elmhurst who saw fit to ban residents from rolling their eyes at the nuttiness that comes out of the mouths of their village board members. What is in the drinking water in these suburbs?
Why do people who are hateful seem to always make polar comparisons when they disagree? How in the world can you compare growing plants in your yard to operating a “whorehouse”?!?
Perhaps people choose to live in affluent suburbs so that they feel safe living in a controlled environment. But when you focus your energy on preventing well meaning people from living the way they choose simply because it offends your cookie cutter sensibilities…. you become more of a problem than the one you think you are affecting. Let the flowers and tomatoes grow in your neighbors yard!
Maybe when you are done operating your gas mower, distributing chemical fertilizers, and spraying pesticides in your own property… you might wake up one day to cancer.
Few people realize that the grass in your lawn is not a naturally occurring phenomena. Grass- such as we have been marketed to believe- is not native to environment we live in, it is a hybrid invasive species that we have accepted as normal.
For people anywhere to fight over such things is ignorant and embarrassing. To think that a few flowers vs. grass lawns will lower your property values? Your values are truly unbalanced.
Tomatoes? Prostitutes? Please! How, exactly, will your property values be diminished by a front-yard garden? Maybe because you have no tomatoes to offer your buyer? Either you’re an avaricious real estate agent or one of those neighbors who hate this old lady’s guts. Go pour some Scott’s Turf Builder Step 4 on your perfect front lawn and pollute the ground water. Then drink it.
Yes, of course, let’s let her do whatever she wants! Why should the city have ability to make laws or pass ordinances protecting other people’s property values!? If she wanted to open a whorehouse, why not? It’s just a few prostitutes. Don’t they have anything better to do than govern this city?!
Don’t these people have something better to do than worry about someone’s tomatoes? They must be living rather empty lives if they can’t find it in themselves let some poor old lady grow tomatoes where she wants to.
Would all the neighbors feel the same way (supporting Ms. L) if instead it was a 30-year old vs. a 70 year old?
Ms Lyakhovetsky’s peace offering takes one back to the 60s, and hippies putting flower stems in the muzzles of National Guard rifles. Surely, tomatoes trump flowers, any time. But I digress: Maybe a couple of her neighbors simply don’t like her, as the story suggests. But let’s also consider that green-grass front lawns are increasingly recognized as an economic and environmental liability, not to mention a pain in the tookus to maintain. While we seek alternative forms of energy, let’s also look at alternative planting options for our homes. Ms Lyakhovetsky is a pioneer!