Bonnie Scott’s fight with the Churchill Farms Homeowners Association could test the limit of Minnesota’s law protecting natural landscapes.

The Minnesota Star Tribune

November 9, 2025 at 1:00PM

Bonnie Scott said she replaced her front yard with native flowers and fescue grass to support wildlife. But conflict has sprouted within the Churchill Farms neighborhood. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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.

Bonnie Scott’s backyard includes tall prairie plantings, and slopes towards a pond. “I haven’t had wood ducks yet, but they’re shopping. They come through this time of year and look at the real estate and think about it,” she said. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

‘Submit that for approval’

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.

Also in the background was a symphony of gas-powered leaf blowers, gathering the fallen autumn splendor from her neighbors’ lush green lawns.

Scott, 63, was a marketer for medical technology companies before she retired and moved to Minnesota from Seattle. She bought her Plymouth home in May 2022 and immediately knew she wanted to convert the lot into native landscaping that would require little maintenance.

In court documents, Churchill Farms HOA said that in August of that year, a board member met Scott at a neighborhood event and urged her to submit her plans to an architectural review committee. It was the first of several such requests — but Scott refused, because she wasn’t making any architectural changes.

“At no point did anybody say, ‘Wow, what are you doing?’” she said. “They said, ‘Hi, I’m your neighbor. You have to submit that for approval.’”

Bodell, who declined to talk in detail about Scott or the suit, described the Churchill Farms HOA in general as “light-touch.” “We’re not … the bad HOAs, ones that are in, like, high density condominiums, where they really need to control how everything looks and feels.”

The HOA’s court filings assert its jurisdiction over plantings, and notes that Scott removed some trees and sod as she transformed her property.

Throughout the summer of 2023, workers placed a mat of new plants across the front yard. In July, a complaint about the yard was sent to the city of Plymouth. At the end of that month, someone drove across the front yard, leaving tire tracks.

Scott filed a police report and decided to install Ring cameras.

The following April, the HOA invited her to come to a meeting and describe her project. Scott didn’t show, though she said she sent information on the state’s natural landscapes law and why it was beneficial to plant natives.

And then, in July, a man on a red riding mower showed up on the Ring cameras.

The mowing incident

When James Hallenberg arrived at Scott’s house on July 9, 2024, he had already mowed three other yards that day. Hallenberg, who has lived in Churchill Farms for 33 years, said another neighbor mentioned to him that Scott was away.

There was a tradition of helping with yardwork in the community, he said — sometimes, Hallenberg would wake up on a snowy morning to see his walk had already been shoveled. So, in his telling, he was being neighborly as he took a few passes with the mower at the edge of the northern property line.

“It’s not like somebody told me to do it. It’s not like some vendetta,” he said. “It’s just the way I am.”

Scott’s housekeeper arrived and demanded he stop. Hallenberg stopped, and took his mower home, around the corner.

Scott had never met or spoken with Hallenberg before, and saw the act as vandalism. She sent an email with the Ring footage to all the property owners in the HOA, asking, “Please help me identify the criminal in this video.”

One person responded, “Can I shake his hand??? Did he run out of gas?”

Bonnie Scott’s front yard is full of fescue grass and milkweed, lead plants and coneflower. She installed signs after a neighbor mowed it. (Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Scott hired a private detective and talked to Plymouth police. When she figured out that the man on the mower was Hallenberg, she sued him for the cost to repair the yard. After a conciliation court hearing, she was awarded $4,724.

Hallenberg said he has learned a hard lesson — that no matter his intentions, he shouldn’t mow on other people’s property without their permission.

“I’m avoiding everything about it. I used to walk my corgi by [that house] every day,” he said. ”Now I don’t. I’m avoiding the woman because she’s, you know, scary.“

HOA crackdown

One of the reasons Scott moved forward with her landscaping was that the HOA, at the time she bought the house, had no rules barring the plantings.

The city of Plymouth limited how much of a yard could be converted from turf grass, but the ordinance was changed after the state outlawed those restrictions in 2023.

A little less than a month after the mowing incident, the HOA called a special meeting to discuss landscaping rules. Scott claims she never got notice of the gathering, and her suit argues the resulting rule was improperly passed.

Essentially, the HOA adopted Plymouth’s old rule — limiting native plantings to 50% of a yard, and requiring 8-foot buffers of turf grass or mulch along all property edges. Bodell described the rule as “really friendly” to native plantings.

“We’re just trying to integrate traditional turf yards with native landscapes,” Bodell said. “And so we want to be … respectful of people who are coming from all kinds of different perspectives on this.”

At the meeting where the rule was passed, 51 people voted in favor, one against, and one abstained, according to HOA court filings. Asked whether Scott came up in the discussion at the meeting, Hallenberg said yes.

“It was very personal, because she made it personal,” he said. “She is not the victim here.”

This is the rule Scott now wants to invalidate with her lawsuit. But a sponsor of the state law supporting native landscapes said lawmakers purposefully left HOAs out.

Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, said the bill was drafted after some cities moved to bar pollinator gardens.

It took a few tries in prior sessions to pass before it finally stuck. HOAs were left out, Hansen said, because “I needed to pass the bill. … I wanted to have broad support.”

He acknowledged that the statute could be stronger but said he was hesitant to re-open discussion on it in the future, “because there are people who want to repeal it, too.”

As for Scott, she says she is prepared to wage a lengthy and expensive legal fight to clarify the state law with a judge’s ruling, so that others don’t have to battle homeowner groups. She knows, she said, that the conflict reached this point because of her “complete failure to engage” with the HOA.

But at this point, she’s not courting neighborhood sympathy.

“I am not interested in knowing my neighbors anymore, after the way this has gone on.”