Senate committee reviews bill H.537 to protect renters’ and HOA residents’ right to grow gardens

Representative Michelle Boslin told the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs on March 31 that H.537 “is that people should have the right to grow vegetable gardens.” The bill, Boslin said, seeks to protect unit owners in common-interest communities from HOA rules that “prohibit or unreasonably restrict the installation or use of a vegetable garden in the areas designated for the exclusive use of the unit owner.”

The measure has two main parts, Cameron Lloyd of the Office of Legislative Council told the committee: protections for unit owners in common-interest communities and a new residential rental provision for tenants. Lloyd said the draft applies retroactively to common-interest communities that contain “12 or more units,” a threshold tied to existing statutory structure, and includes a plain-language definition of a vegetable garden as plants cultivated for personal consumption or donation.

Under the HOA provisions the bill would allow owners to install vegetable gardens on land that is exclusively theirs and would prevent associations from imposing blanket bans on such gardens. Reasonable restrictions would still be permitted, Lloyd said, listing examples in the draft such as limits on permanent structures, maintenance standards for gardens visible from the street, and a process that requires an association to provide a written notice and at least 10 days for correction before charging a unit owner for enforcement costs.

For renters, H.537 would require landlords to allow tenants to grow vegetables in portable containers approved by the landlord and to permit—but not require—installation of in-ground beds at the landlord’s discretion. The bill would allow landlords to require tenants to pay for excessive water or electricity and to charge a security deposit for installation; Lloyd flagged that interaction with a separate landlord-tenant security-deposit cap in another bill and advised staff to reconcile the two measures.

The draft also expressly excludes cultivation of cannabis and other unlawful substances, Lloyd said, to avoid conflict with the state’s separate cannabis regulatory framework. Committee members asked the sponsors to clarify the word “consumption” in the statutory definition and whether non‑ingested flowers or donated plants would be covered; Boslin and Lloyd said the bill’s plain-language definition was intended to cover plants grown for personal use or donation and that some non‑ingested flowers could qualify under that reading.

Members raised practical questions about pesticide language in the draft. The bill would prohibit “synthetic chemical products commonly used in growing a plant crop” in certain contexts; legislators asked how to distinguish broadly used, low‑drift products from those that pose a cross‑property risk and whether an absolute prohibition is enforceable. Lloyd recommended additional subject-matter consultation, including technical input from legislative or agency experts, to refine any pesticide-related restrictions.

Committee members also discussed whether to spend floor time on H.537 now or to add it to a study list. One senator noted the committee is receiving many house bills and suggested prioritizing larger economic-development measures; the chair said the group will finalize prioritization at the end of the week and that the bill could be scheduled for further consideration. No vote was taken on H.537 during the session.

Next steps: the sponsor and counsel will clarify several definitions in the draft—particularly the scope of “consumption,” the pesticide language, the retroactivity language tied to the 12‑unit threshold, and the interaction with related security-deposit limits—and the committee will decide scheduling during its upcoming prioritization meeting.