Greece, NY Landscaping Rules: Weed Ordinances (2026)

Section 157-5A(7) of the Property Maintenance chapter requires that, except for farms, all grass, weeds, trees, or other plant growth be cut or trimmed to avoid the accumulation of blowing trash, dumping, rodent harborage, infestation, criminal activity, or a blighting or unsightly influence on the neighborhood. The same subsection folds in a broader mandate: owners and occupants must remove brush, grass, rubbish, or weeds, or spray, cut, trim, remove, or destroy poisonous shrubs and weeds, whenever ordered to do so by notice from the Town of Greece, in order to prevent unhealthful, hazardous, or dangerous conditions on the property.

The rule sits inside Chapter 157, which the Town adopted in 1993 and most recently amended in 2025, and which the code says supplements rather than replaces state and local fire and building law; where a state standard is stricter, the stricter one controls. The Building Inspector administers the standard and decides, case by case, whether a lot's growth crosses into a nuisance, since the chapter sets no numeric height trigger the way some neighboring towns do. Property owners who receive a cutting notice and fail to act do not just risk a citation: Section 157-5A(7) lets the Town send its own crew to cut the lot and then bill the cost back to the property, turning an unpaid cutting order into a real property assessment collectible with taxes.