Village Agrees to Waive Fines if Shorewood Woman Brings Natural Lawn into Compliance

In municipal court Wednesday night, Louise Quigley agreed to comply with Shorewood’s requests to bring a portion of her lawn into village code and officials waived a $429 citation.

planted around her Shorewood home came to a head Wednesday when the village's and Quigley's attorney agreed on the deal.

Ericka Lang, the village’s Planning and Development administrator, said Quigley had previously been given permission to plant grasses in the parkway and they are still working on a plan to make sure those grasses remain in compliance with the village’s ordinance. Discussion Wednesday in a pre-trial hearing centered around a strip of plantings starting at the sidewalk and ending four feet in toward her private lawn on East Jarvis Street and five feet on North Maryland Avenue.

The village is asking she reduce the grasses in that area to six inches, and aren't asking her to alter her private lawn. Lang said the village actually never took issue with the private portion and simply had issue with the four to five feet and the parkway.

Shorewood will waive the citation Quigley received after missing a court date, but she is still on the hook for a $177 fine for not bringing her grasses into compliance and about $50 in court costs.

But Quigley said she'll plant some short native plants in that area and plans to keep them below six inches.

"I'll still have my prairie," she said.

“It’s not that you can’t fight City Hall, it’s that at this point, it isn’t worth it. I can still get something that is comfortable for me.”

Since Quigley started circulating letters and a , Lang said she has received no less than eight formal complaints, which she has documented, from residents showing support of the village’s effort to tame Quigley's lawn. Lang said the battle came on the heels of 15 years of complaints she said the village received about Quigley's prairie grass.

Lang said the village will continue to monitor Quigley's lawn.