Illinois HOA Native Landscaping Rights (765 ILCS 167/10)

Section 10(a) is the operative sentence: an Association shall not prohibit any resident or owner from planting or growing Illinois native species on the resident's or owner's lawn, so long as four conditions hold. The area must be maintained predominantly free of weeds, invasive species and trash. The vegetation must not extend over or onto neighboring properties. It must not extend onto public or common sidewalks, pathways, streets or other public or common areas or elements. And it must not interfere with traffic or utilities. Those conditions are the association's leverage, and an owner who lets a prairie planting spill over the sidewalk loses the statute's protection for that encroachment.

The height clause is the part that matters most in practice, because a six-foot grass-height rule is how Illinois associations historically stopped prairie plantings. Section 10(b) lets an association adopt reasonable rules and regulations governing a planned, intentional and maintained native landscape, but only rules that do not impair the native landscape's proper maintenance and care and do not impose height restrictions. Big bluestem, compass plant and cup plant routinely exceed six feet at maturity, and after July 19, 2024 an association cannot use a height cap to make them unlawful.

What counts as native is defined, and defined by reference to a state agency. Under 765 ILCS 167/5, Illinois native species means trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, flowers, forbs, sedges, grasses and other plants growing in the State of Illinois before European settlement, or as otherwise defined by rule by the Department of Natural Resources. A native landscape is an intentionally maintained area composed mainly of those species. Both definitions carve out exotic or noxious weeds regulated under the Illinois Noxious Weed Law or the Illinois Exotic Weed Act, so a stand of teasel, purple loosestrife or common buckthorn is outside the Act no matter how the owner labels the bed. The word intentionally is doing work too: the Act protects a planned planting, not an unmowed yard.

The protection covers your lawn and stops at the property line of your control. Section 10(c) states the Section does not apply to common areas or elements, or to other property owned by the Association or by other owners, in which the resident or owner does not have authority to landscape or plant. A condominium owner with no private yard therefore gains nothing from the Act as to the development's shared grounds, and cannot convert a common lawn to prairie under it.

Which associations are bound follows the same bridge Illinois used in its EV charging statute. Section 5 defines Association by reference to subsection (o) of Section 2 of the Condominium Property Act or Section 1-5 of the Common Interest Community Association Act, as applicable, so condominium associations and common interest community associations are both covered and there is no gap between the two Acts on this subject.

The Act binds associations only. It says nothing to municipalities and counties, so a village weed and grass-height ordinance, and the statewide duty to control noxious weeds under the Illinois Noxious Weed Law, continue to apply to a native planting on their own terms. An Illinois homeowner converting a lawn to prairie has to satisfy two separate authorities, and 765 ILCS 167 answers only one of them.

What Illinois did not enact is as important as what it did. There is no Illinois statute requiring an association to permit xeriscape, drought-tolerant or low-water landscaping as such, no statute protecting artificial turf, gravel, mulch beds or hardscape conversions, and no statute suspending association landscaping rules or fines during a declared drought or a local watering restriction. Illinois also has no statutory right to leave turf unwatered or brown. The Native Landscaping Act reaches native plantings and nothing else, and 765 ILCS 165/20(b)(ii) confirms the point from the other direction by leaving it to the association's own energy policy statement to decide whether a rain water collection or composting system is allowed.

The Act carries no penalty, no fee-shifting provision and no deadline, which distinguishes it sharply from Illinois's solar and EV charging statutes. It does not declare conflicting covenants void, as 765 ILCS 165/20(c) does for solar and 765 ILCS 1085/30(a) does for chargers. It states only that an Association shall not prohibit the planting, so the practical effect is that a rule or covenant banning native plantings is unenforceable to that extent, and an association enforcing one is acting outside its statutory authority.

Enforcement therefore runs through the ordinary association fine process. A condominium board must give notice and an opportunity to be heard before levying a fine under 765 ILCS 605/18.4(l), and a common interest community association board is under the identical requirement in 765 ILCS 160/1-30(g). At that hearing the owner's defenses are that the planting is composed mainly of Illinois native species, that the bed is planned, intentional and maintained, that it is predominantly free of weeds, invasive species and trash, that nothing encroaches on a neighbor, sidewalk, street or common area, and that a rule relied on is an unlawful height restriction under Section 10(b).

If the fine stands, the remedy is a suit in the circuit court of the county where the property sits for a declaration that the rule may not be enforced against a native landscape and an injunction against further fines. There is no Illinois agency that adjudicates this. Before filing, an owner can force disclosure of the rules and minutes: 765 ILCS 160/1-30(i) requires the board to make the declaration, community instruments, rules and regulations and board minutes available for examination and copying, treats a failure to respond within 30 days as a denial, and awards reasonable attorney's fees and costs to a member who prevails where the court finds the failure was due to the board's acts or omissions. Documenting when a height rule was adopted matters, because rules predating July 19, 2024 are the ones most likely to contain the cap the statute now forbids.