On Aug. 12, Colorado Springs resident Nico (last name withheld for privacy) vented in a Facebook post about how code enforcement for the City of Colorado Springs had told him to tear out a garden he’d worked hard to cultivate over the summer due to a neighbor’s complaint.
He planted the garden in the strip of land between the sidewalk and the road in front of his house on the west side of Colorado Springs. These narrow swatches of land are often neglected and weed-filled, serving mainly as a pit stop for local dogs and collection point for wayward bits of trash – and for this reason are sometimes referred to as “hellstrips.”
“Just learned I have to rip out my entire hellstrip garden of nanking cherry bushes, russian sage, sunflowers, echinacea, irises, and roses due to a persistent narc who took issue with my yard and reported it every time the ‘weeds’ got too long for their liking, despite my upkeep on that space this summer,” he wrote…