After 6-Year Battle, Florida Couple Wins The Right To Plant Veggies In Front Yard

Okra. Bell peppers. Cherry tomatoes. Jalapeños and squash.

Those are some of the vegetables that Hermine Ricketts and her husband Tom Carroll planted in front of their home in Miami Shores, Fla., on Monday.

That's the day a Florida law went into effect that nullifies local bans on vegetable gardens at residential properties. It was one of those ordinances that had forced the couple to uproot a garden that Ricketts had tended for 17 years.

Ricketts had her vegetable garden in front of her home because that's where the sun is, as NPR's Greg Allen reported in 2013: "[H]er house faces south and her backyard is mostly in the shade. A retired architect, originally from Jamaica, Ricketts says she gardens for the food and for the peace it brings her."

"This is a peach tree that I put in, and around it, I had kale, and in between the kales, I had some Chinese cabbage," Ricketts said then. "And I also had Swiss chard, yellow Swiss chard."