Gardens, greenhouses OK based on zoning plan

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles to run each Tuesday in the Frontiersman that will explore zoning in general, the present zoning proposal for the Mat-Su Borough and how it may affect core-area property owners.

MAT-SU -- Based on some rumors circulating through the Valley, one would think the Mat-Su Borough had teamed up with local farmers and grocery stores in a conspiracy to cut out any backyard gardens within the borough.

No gardens, no greenhouses and, if your children are in 4-H, they can forget about raising a cute little lamb to be showed at the fair.

"Under the Borough plan, most of the core area is zoned suburban residential," states a flyer sent out with the Anchorage Daily News recently. "If you live there, you won't be allowed to grow a garden, kids will not be allowed their 4-H projects and you won't be able to build a greenhouse without permission."

That's simply not true, said Borough Planning Director Sandra Garley.

Gardens, greenhouses and yes, even space for 4-H steers, ewes and pigs -- as long as they're permitted by neighborhood covenants -- are allowable under the borough's current zoning proposal. It's only natural, she said -- they are uses that tend to go along with living in the borough area.

"A residential district is created to allow residential uses," Garley explained, "and those things that are not intrusive to residential uses."

What is an accessory use?

That's a simple question to answer, Garley said.

"If you drive through any neighborhood in the Valley," Garley said, "and you look at the predominant things, those are the accessory uses."

Tool sheds, garages, gardens and greenhouses are commonly found in residential neighborhoods in the Valley, and that means they're accessory uses, according to the current proposal.

An accessory, according to the core-area zoning ordinance up for public review, means "a use or structure incidental and subordinate to the principal use of parcel of a lot and which is commonly associated with and is on the same lot as the principal use and integrally related to it."

So why the confusion?

It seems to be an issue of forgetting to drag and drop at the right time, Garley said.

As pointed out by members of Mat-Su Property Owners Association, the fact that gardens and greenhouses are permissible is left out in a crucial portion of the public review draft. A previously instituted zoning ordinance, "Single Family Residential," specifically allows "agriculture, such as gardens, greenhouses and animal husbandry including raising produce or animals for sale …"

That provision is not listed in the accessory uses for "Suburban Residential. "

"Editorially, I think it just got lost in the cutting and pasting," Garley said. "That's a revision that we are certainly going to make."

Garley said, after staff read through the document, it seemed that the definition of accessory use as things that naturally pair with residential property was clear enough, but when the document went out for public comment, it appears that wasn't so.

People are afraid, Garley said, that future borough administrations may interpret the ordinance narrowly and preclude people from planting a garden or raising a steer.

"That is a comment that we have heard and we will respond to it," Garley said.

Do I need a permit

to build a greenhouse

or plant a garden?

Just as you don't have to ask for a building permit, or any other type of permit, in order to put a basketball hoop on your garage, Garley said there is no need to apply for a permit to have a potting shed. Or a garden. Or 4-H livestock.

"That's a large issue of debate -- one of the things that are real hard for people to reach [understanding]," Garley said. "It's a flag to us that we need to make sure that the language is very clear that this is an accessory use."