‘Somebody ratted us out,’ said Riverside social club owner who has to replant her yard

Bees and butterflies appear to be happy with the new landscaping at the old Firehouse No. 7 in Riverside, but the city and some neighbors are not.

“I don’t care what the haters have to say,” said Carey Tarkman, who is opening the Rose & Peacock Social Club at the former firehouse this fall.

She may not care what is said, but Tarkman and her husband, Tom, can’t keep the tallgrass they’ve planted.

“Somebody ratted us out in this neighborhood,” Carey Tarkman said.

City spokeswoman Megan Lovely confirmed there were complaints about weeds and tallgrass from neighbors.

Tarkman said when her husband bought the building for her as a present at auction in March, he spent three weeks applying three rounds of weed killer “to kill off that nasty stuff that was there.”

They then planted 34 bags of wildflower seeds and watered them twice a day for six weeks.

“The whole idea was to have just a beautifully natural wildflower garden instead of a lawn,” she said. “It took all this time for it to come up. . . . We were just letting it do its natural thing.”

She said the native grasses have attracted a lot of butterflies and bees along with some of the negative attention.

“This case involves issues with vegetation on the property’s general premise as well as in the City right-of-way,” Lovely said in an e-mailed statement.

“Both Public Works and MABCD have provided the owner with instructions for bringing the property into compliance with code requirements and have provided adequate time to accomplish this.”

Tarkman said the city informed her she had to cut back the grass to 12 inches.

“How do you expect us to do that?” she said she asked.

She said it’s impossible to cut the grass without cutting the flowers, too, and she said the grass immediately will grow back to more than 12 inches.

“We’re going to have to basically cut the entire thing down,” Tarkman said.

She said the Wichita Art Museum has some of the same grass “and nobody’s saying a peep.”

Lovely said the museum’s grass is part of a garden exhibit and doesn’t inhibit driver visibility. Also, she said she’s not aware of any complaints regarding that grass.

The city has extended a deadline for the Tarkmans to cut the grass, but Carey Tarkman said that’s not the point.

“It’s our personal property.”

Tarkman said she remembers the city previously encouraging residents to plant native grasses but “apparently that doesn’t mean squat anymore.”

Lovely said the city encourages planting grasses that are drought-resistant, such as what it has on its golf courses.

Tarkman said the city kept saying she had “uncultivated, unkept” plantings, “and that’s not true.”

Regardless, she said, “We’re going to have to start over.”

This story was originally published July 14, 2023 at 6:06 AM.