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He then compared the landscaping effort to the kind of overgrown mess that often accompanies a drug house.

“I’m sorry, I come from a farm and we work on getting rid of weeds.”

Coun. Michael Walters was pushing for city lawn signs, advice and encouragement for other homeowners who want to do this responsibly.

During the committee meeting, things got so tense that Coun. Ben Henderson had to remind councillors to keep it professional. The committee sent the report to council to craft next steps with cooler heads around the table. It will be up for debate on Sept. 6.

Photo by Bloom, David / Postmedia

Schlegelmilch’s front lawn doesn’t technically have weeds. They’re all native plants grown from seeds carefully collected around Edmonton by Michael Clark, who nurtures them in a greenhouse until they’re ready to transplant on projects like this or larger bioswales in new neighbourhoods.

Clark redid Schlegelmilch’s yard in 2013, creating stream beds to funnel the run-off from his roof to a low point in the yard. That space is designed to fill with water, then drain over 24 hours, which doesn’t allow mosquitoes to reproduce.

The yard’s looser, clay-based soils hold moisture so well the wetland plants grow higher than his knees. As the native plants take hold, it becomes easier to keep the invasive weeds out.

It still takes regular weeding, but “we’ve been getting tons of bees, even dragonflies, which we never had before. I even saw a hummingbird,” he said.

Photo by David Bloom / Postmedia

Schlegelmilch’s bioswale survived the mowing last year. And since they realized the error, city staff have been great to deal with, he said. They come by looking for invasive weeds and work together to identify them.