Yes, KC may actually take 80-year-old Army vet to court over his … butterfly garden

Dennis Moriarty, an 80-year-old U.S. Army veteran, spends afternoons on his porch with his dogs watching the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds in the lush, 1,500-square-foot garden of wildflowers he’s planted in front of his Kansas City home.

The milkweed, coneflowers and other native plants stand several feet tall. Culver’s root, buttonbush and 10 other varieties spill over his stone retaining walls.

It’s not only gorgeous, but beneficial, using less water than conventional grass, for one thing. Yet the city has ordered him to either cut it down or wind up in court. That’s because Moriarty’s flowers are several inches higher than the 10 inches allowed in the city code against common nuisance.

With all the challenges Kansas City faces — gun violence, homelessness, crumbling abandoned buildings, the lack of affordable housing, trashy vacant lots and so much more — we have one question: Huh?

Code inspector Leon Bowman said he issued Moriarty a warning and give him 10 days to cut “what any code inspector would consider weeds. It is not tidy.”

If Moriarty doesn’t cut the wildflowers, Bowman said he will be back with a summons setting a fine of somewhere between $75 and $150. If Moriarty doesn’t pay, he’ll get a warrant and a court date.

If any code inspector really would consider these wildflowers weeds, that’s the problem.

And instead of tormenting a Kansas Citian doing something positive, how about reexamining the code itself in a world in which the climate is changing? Going forward, many fewer of us will even try to have a lawn that looks like a golf course.

Moriarty, a retired self-employed tradesman, has lived in his home in the urban core for more than 20 years. For many years, he mowed the 60-foot downslope in his front lawn. When it became too dangerous for him to do so, “I decided to plant it in wildflowers for the benefit of our environment and our ecology,” he said.

Moriarity doesn’t want to trim the blooms from his thriving garden — not yet, anyway. He doesn’t want a court battle, either. “They need to change their codes to reflect the fact that we need to take care of our environment.”

He also wants a conversation with Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sent him a message promising some unspecified resolution after a tweet Moriarty posted about his predicament got more than 23,000 likes and 4,600 retweets from all over the world.

One supporter wrote, “You’ve gone global Dennis! Best wishes and support from Ireland, hopefully thrown out of Court and seen for what it really is! ádh mór (good luck).”

Another requested seeds so that she could “start a DennisGarden” of her own.

Moriarty, who spent $100 a year ago to start his garden, said he will cut the flowers down to 8 inches “after the first hard frost,” to be sure they will grow again next spring and summer. He said his neighbors have already asked how he grew the garden so that they can do likewise.

When Moriarty noticed Bowman photographing his garden a week ago he asked what the problem was. “He told me ‘these are weeds,’” Moriarty said. “They certainly are not weeds.”

Moriarty spent years as a volunteer, planting urban gardens and cleaning up trash.

Of course rules are important to prevent neglected fields of weeds that attract rodents and other pests. But that is not what this is.

If inspectors can’t tell the difference, maybe Moriarty could explain it to them. And if the code isn’t flexible enough to allow any exceptions, then that’s what needs to change.