Cologne (dpa / lnw) – The North Rhine-Westphalian City Council has welcomed the plans of Municipal Minister Ina Scharrenbach (CDU) to change the state building code and to take action against gravel gardens. “Cities need a clear legal basis for more green in the city,” said Deputy Managing Director Verena Göppert. “Gravel gardens are very popular. However, ecologically they are a sin. They seal up space unnecessarily and offer no habitat for flora and fauna.”
Scharrenbach had announced the planned change in building regulations on Monday in the “WAZ”. Gravel gardens have been banned since 2018, but they still exist in some places. Municipalities are responsible for enforcing the ban.
Göppert from the city council explained that greening and planting of undeveloped areas of the building plots is already mandatory. Until 2019, however, municipalities could have specified the requirements in more concrete terms by means of so-called “front garden statutes”. According to the current status, cities could adopt statutes for residential areas. “However, whether these are valid is legally controversial because the building code is not clearly formulated here. The clarification announced by the state in the NRW building code is therefore correct,” said Göppert.
“But the cities don’t want a “garden police”,” she clarified. “Here the main focus is on the insight of the citizens: Nobody is doing themselves a favor with a gravel garden. You can argue about taste, but anyone who thinks that having more stones in the garden means less work is wrong.”