A lawsuit blooms in Plymouth as homeowner battles HOA over her naturally planted yard

When Bonnie Scott started planning the yard of her new home in the Churchill Farms subdivision off of County Road 24 in Plymouth, she thought it might one day become a neighborhood gathering place for people and animals alike. She wanted to attract lightning bugs, frogs and wood ducks. She hired a company to install a meadow of low-growing grasses in the front and tall, swaying prairie natives in the back. Three years after she bought the house, the property has become a focal point in the neighborhood, but not in the way Scott wanted. People have driven over the yard and mowed it without her permission. Scott enlisted the police and a private detective to find the offenders — and now, some neighbors stay away from her property. Last month, the conflict escalated. Scott sued the Churchill Farms Homeowners Association, asking a court to rule that fines it has levied against her are unenforceable because of state law. Scott’s argument could test the limits of that law, which says cities and towns can’t restrict native landscaping — but it says nothing about HOAs. “Nobody wins in a lawsuit,” she said. “But at this point, that law needs to be better.” The Churchill Farms HOA answered in court, writing that Scott maintained her yard in an “unsightly manner” to create “a condition which is indecent or offensive to the senses.” Scott had been fined $250 by the HOA as of that filing, which asks the court to foreclose on her home, if necessary, to pay those fees and the HOA’s legal costs. “We’ve always wanted to resolve this from the beginning, but we still want to resolve this amicably,” said Gerard Bodell, the president of the HOA. Churchill Farms is a community of 103 houses with tightly trimmed yards, three-car garages and ponds ringed with native plants. On a recent fall morning, a red-winged blackbird was making a racket next to Scott’s screened back porch.