Missouri Sunflower Man Battles City For Years For Inexplicable Reasons

The city of St. Peters, Missouri has been battling for
four years to force homeowner Chris Bank to get
rid of the annual sunflower display in his yard.

OK, I admit this post is only tangentially related to climate and weather, but it is about nature, so close enough.   

It's also one of the most inexplicable, infuriating legal battles I've ever seen.

Chris Bank of St. Peters, Missouri has grown a whole bunch of sunflowers in his yard since 2020.  And why not? They're pretty, pollinators love them, birds probably do, too, and it's a nice alternative from a boring lawn. 

The city of St. Peters doesn't feel the same way. All this hysteria against Bank and his sunflowers originated in 2021 as complaints from a homeowner's association. 

(Pro tip: NEVER buy a house in a neighborhood with an HOA.)

St. Peters officials enthusiastically joined the fray on the side of the HOA. Bank keeps finding loopholes that allow him to keep the sunflowers. The city also keeps changing the rules to coerce Bank into getting rid of all this sunny blooms,  but he won't budge.

I don't blame him. I don't know about you, but a sunflower always puts me in a better mood. The more sunflowers, the better the mood. 

The first year of the battle was in 2022.  St. Peters officials said he violated a rule in which the property need to have at least 50 percent grass coverage. But the property did have that much grass. It was just that sunflowers were also growing up through the grass.

Talk about micromanaging! A city telling people exactly how much lawn they should have?  Do they dictate which flowers, trees must be planted? What color car is parked in the garage? Where does it end? 

In 2023, Bank said the city revised the ordinance to allow enforcement via interpretation rather than measurement. A municipal judge find him. Bank appeared and the case was going to go to a jury in St. Charles County, Missouri. 

The city then withdrew its charges, probably because no sane jury would object to Bank's sunflowers, though St. Peters officials said they withdrew because the sunflowers had been removed. By the time they got around to the jury trial, it was November, so the sunflowers were gone for the season. 

Last year, a miserable woman trespassed and cut down at least 600 of the sunflowers in Bank's yard. She was caught on surveillance tape. He contacted police but prosecutors refused to take action, even though the identity of the vandal is known. She got away with it scot free. 

Because I'm sure some cranks in town thought the woman was a hero not the villain she was. 

This year, the city tried again by classifying sunflowers as a crop and limiting them to 10 percent of a  front yard. He's refused to remove his plants and is scheduled for another court appearance in September.  

Bank is the kind of rebel I can really get behind. He told Fox 2 in St. Louis that he won't give up, no matter how many times the city of St. Peters tries to change the ordinances. "I'm not going to quit this fight until this gets settled - at least settled the correct way," he said.