Cicero, IL Landscaping Rules: Artificial Turf (2026)

Cicero regulates artificial turf through Section 22-617(d) of its vacant-building registry ordinance (Article X, Chapter 22), which sets the acceptable yard maintenance standard for any "registrable property," meaning land or buildings the town has determined to be vacant, in foreclosure, or foreclosed. The section lists "artificial turf/sod" alongside grass, ground covers, bushes, shrubs, hedges, decorative rock and bark as acceptable ground cover for a registered vacant lot's front, side and rear yards. The same subsection specifically disallows weeds, gravel, broken concrete, asphalt or similar material as landscaping, and Section 22-617(e) requires that whatever ground cover is used be watered, irrigated, mowed or cut, with trimmings removed.

This is the only mention of artificial turf located in the general code file supplied for this review; Cicero's zoning ordinance, which governs dimensional and land-use standards for occupied residential, commercial and industrial lots town-wide, is published as a separate instrument and was not part of the source reviewed here, so whether artificial turf is allowed as a landscaping material for an occupied single-family yard outside the vacant-building registry cannot be confirmed from this code. Property owners maintaining a registered vacant lot with artificial turf still fall under the article's broader security, insurance and maintenance obligations, and failure to maintain acceptable ground cover under Section 22-617 can be cited as a code violation under the enforcement provisions of Section 22-620.