This Year's (Illegal) Garden

Here are some pictures of our front garden. It has been an excellent year for our tomatoes, the sunflowers are 8-feet tall, the beans are hugely prolific, and the basil is feeding my pesto addiction quite nicely. The zinnias, black-eyed-susans, and mums are doing what they always do. A friend watered things for us during the heat wave while we were in Montana, (thank you, Sarah), and now we are gearing up to eat a pound of green beans per person per day for the duration.

Public Nuisance?

A few months ago I took out the swath of grass between the street and the curb and put in a raised garden bed.  It had been wasted space that just ended up looking shabby and I was tired of picking up other people's dogs' poop.  I thought some peas, beans, and zinnias might brighten up the space and provide us with some fresh vegetables. 

(This is how it looked back in June when we got the ticket)

The City of New Haven saw it differently and demanded that I remove the garden.  The penalty for failure to comply is a $100.00 fine for each citation.  So far I have only gotten the one citation and I have mostly just ignored it.  When I read the statute under which I was warned, the official charge said "Public Nuisance."  

Here is how the garden now looks, in all its glory.  In a city that is objectively not all that beautiful, is this really a public nuisance?