A man planted a garden of sunflowers at his home in memory of a loved one. The city sued him for it

A Missouri man’s sunflower garden honoring the memory of a loved one has turned into a nasty legal battle, as city officials say the flowers violate local laws.

For four summers, Chris Bank has grown tall rows of sunflowers outside his home in St. Peters, a suburb of St. Louis, despite city officials citing him for breaking a rule that prohibits covering 50 percent of his yard’s grass.

However, this year, city officials amended that rule to classify sunflowers as a crop. That designation lowers the 50 percent coverage rule to a measly 10 percent – a drastic change that Bank says unfairly targets him, Fox 2 reported.

“A crop is considered obviously planting and consuming and growing, and then actually selling or harvesting your product, which I explained to them, I don’t do either of that,” Bank told the outlet. “They’re a flower. I plant them like any other flower, but I don’t harvest seeds or sell.”

Bank, who has gone back and forth with the city now for years over the flowers, said he started the garden as a way to remember his cousin Jenny, who died.

“She truly loved sunflowers, and I thought it would be fitting for her to be part of it,” he told KBTX.

The city said that giant flowers qualify as a crop regardless of how they’re used. Under the new ordinance, the grassy space between flower rows also counts as part of the “planting area,” which Bank says makes no sense.

“I asked them, if that’s the planting area, then what am I cutting and maintaining then? Because it looks like grass to me,” he said.

During a Tuesday court hearing, a judge ruled in favor of the City of St. Peters, agreeing that sunflowers are a crop and that they covered more than 10 percent of Bank’s yard.

Documents from the city also revealed that over the years, neighbors complained about the flowers, with one saying they were “getting ridiculous to look at.”

Meanwhile, other neighbors had negative comments about Bank’s character, including one who said he was vindictive for refusing to follow the city ordinance despite years of complaints.

“Being vindictive, you’d have to give an example. I don’t know who would say that and not give an example,” Bank told KBTX. “And obviously, there would be court cases on that kind of stuff if that was the issue.”

Some neighbors showed up in court Tuesday in support of Bank, including one who said it seemed the city was targeting Bank with its ordinance changes.

“This is attacking him. This is not that they care about the sunflowers,” the neighbor, identified just by her first name, Lexi, said. “He’s really standing up for what he believes.”

Bank agrees with his neighbor’s assessment, telling the news station he believes the city is targeting him due to a property dispute years ago with his homeowners’ association.

“You’re basically battling the city, a city judge and a city prosecuting attorney. I mean, what is really gonna happen? I mean, it doesn’t make a difference what you can prove and what you can show,” he said.

In a GoFundMe, Bank made to support his endeavors, he noted the dispute was “abuse of power at its finest.”

Bank says he plans to appeal the case to St. Charles County, where he hopes the court will be less biased.

“I really want to go in front of St. Charles, not a St. Peters-biased court, but literally go in front of my peers,” he said. “And if they say, ‘Yeah, Mr. Bank, we side with the city,’ then I will never grow a sunflower again.”