Kane County, IL Landscaping Rules: Native Plants (2026)

Kane County Code § 15-1 defines 'prairie plants' as any of eight hundred fifty one species identified as a prairie plant by the Illinois plant information network maintained by the Illinois Natural History Survey, which publishes the list online. That definition matters because two of the county's nuisance rules build an exception around it. Section 15-2(A)(1), the noxious-weeds ban, prohibits keeping, maintaining or growing noxious weeds or other vegetation that creates a health or safety hazard, but expressly excludes prairie plants from that ban, along with land in a public nature area and property owned or leased by a unit of government.

' Together the two exclusions mean a homeowner who plants a native prairie garden, however tall the vegetation grows, is not automatically cited the way an overgrown lawn or a patch of Canada thistle would be. The protection is specific to the state's tracked species list, though, not a blanket native-plants defense: § 15-1 separately defines 'noxious weed' as species listed in the Illinois Noxious Weed Rule, including marihuana, Canada thistle, perennial sowthistle, musk thistle, johnsongrass and kudzu, and those remain banned even if they appear inside an otherwise exempt planting.

Farmland gets its own, broader exemption: § 15-3 excuses any parcel that is both zoned and primarily used for agriculture from the whole nuisance chapter, independent of whether the vegetation on it qualifies as a prairie plant.