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Weed Laws Article on Landscaping (John Marshall Law Review) Page 18 of 27 for human use and enjoyment." 134 A weed law, as applied to natural landscapers, denies the landscapers' ability to express themselves, through an activity statutorily recognized as art. Neighbors and government officials need not concur that the natural landscape is "art" before First Amendment protection attaches. In interpreting art as speech protected by the First Amendment, the court in Piarowski V. Illinois Community College 135 stated, "[t]he freedom of speech and of the press protected by the First Amendment has been interpeted to embrace purely artistic as well as political expression (and entertainment that falls short of anyone's idea or art...)..." 136 One of the most spectacular examples of natural landscaping as art lies in the heart of Chicago's Grant Park. The Wild Flower Works II is the creation of Chicago artist Chapman Kelly.137 Kelly sees his garden of wildflowers, legumes and other native plants not merely as dirt and flowers, but rather a giant canvas on which he does his "most spectacular work." 138 The ecological painting is a socio - political work that symbolizes the proper role of humankind within Nature. In 1988, when the Park District sought to have the Wild Flower Works plowed under, Kelly went to court and obtained a temporary restraining order arguing his First Amendment rights. The lawsuit was later settled by allowing the Wild Flower Works to remain in Grant Park and the Park District to receive regular reports on its maintenance. "Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint and the soil and air as the canvas - working with nature provides the technique." 139 More remarkable examples of gardening as art are the efforts of the French Impressionist, Claude Monet. Following the death of his wife, Monet moved to Giverny, France in 1883. There he planted the gardens that were the subject of his most famous paintings. Focusing on color relationships and the effects of light, Monet carefully arranged pure colors in the abstract form of flowering plants to "create richly patterned textures and mood by contrasting or homonizing color relationships." 14° In the later, and most productive part of his career, Monet used his flower and water gardens at Giverny as a living studio. "With the living, growing and changing plants, always subject to light and weather, Monet created an organized concentrated color environment where he could live, breathe, observe and walk, forever having his painter's eye challenged by the effects of light." 141 Many of the plants Monet employed, and much of the layout of the gardens, are the same or similar to many of today's natural landscapes. Enforcement of a weed law denies the artist the tools of her art, Nature. A city's weed law enforcement is as devastating to a natural landscaper as declaring music a nuisance would be to a musician. Absent a showing of some compelling municipal interest, a city does not have the power to restrain a natural landscaper's freedom of expression. The unjustified restraint of freedom of expression consitutes a violation of the First Amendment. http: / /www.epa.gov /glnpo /greenacres /weedlaws /JMLR.html 2/22/01