ST. PETERS, Mo. — A St. Peters man who meticulously plants 600 sunflowers in his front yard annually arrived home last month to find them cut to shreds.
In disbelief, Chris Bank, 49, arrived at his home that day and had to call the police.
When Bank reviewed the camera footage he discovered a woman getting out of a white SUV with scissors. She walked up to his front yard and began cutting his plants one by one.
"The front row right there those are usually the prettiest colors. I got pinks and oranges and stuff like that," Bank said.
Bank said it was about two months of work.
"In the video, she brought her on scissors and started snippin, snippin, snipping," Bank said.
Bank is now grieving the loss of his display which he refers to as his "Christmas decorations in July."
"All that work! I would have rather her start breaking out the windows in my car than doing that because then I can just send that to the auto body and have them fix it," Bank said. " I know their plants but they're still living."
Bank spent an entire month preparing the flowers for a full and useful life. He said pollinators like bees and hummingbirds expected the flowers to be there.
What the sunflowers mean
Bank has rescued several creatures in his day but in 2020 the sunflowers rescued him from a dark place.
"Instead of turning to drinking or drugs or bad behavior, I tried to keep my mind busy on sunflowers and it worked," Bank said. He called it a coping mechanism without being destructive.
Although Bank has grown sunflowers in the past, this project was on an entirely new scale for him. He shared that he has collected over 40 different variations of sunflowers that came from cross-pollination.
"I just started doing research on sunflowers and found out there were so many different kinds of sunflowers. I really wasn't paying attention to how many sunflowers I was ordering from different places," Bank said laughing.
When spring arrived he came up with a bleacher formation for the plants and they turned out beautiful, Bank recalls.
"I grow every one of these from seeds and then I have to transfer them to the ground," he said. This process takes a lot of Bank's free time.
Obstacles in the past
The same coping mechanism that kept Bank out of trouble also got him into trouble. The first year he planted the flowers, the city told him that was not following the law.
"I didn't know it was a sunflowers law in St. Peters, Missouri," Bank said." You had to have 50% sunflowers to turf ratio."
Bank set out to prove that he was abiding by the ordinance and he stood his ground on the premise of simple math.
"I explained to the city I had more, it was easy to measure. I cut the grass in between it{sunflowers} so it's still a yard that I maintain like every other neighbor does it's just mine takes 10 times more work to do so."
Although Bank said he never received complaints from his neighbors in the past, Director of Communications Lisa Bedian from St. Peter's City Hall said they only respond to the ordinance when there has been a complaint.
"We are very responsive to residence complaints and concerns," Bedian said.
Still, the city of St. Peters cited Bank two years in a row and when he arrived to court ready to defend his beloved flowers his citations were dropped, according to Bank.
Bedian said that a decision like that can only be made by the prosecuting attorney, not her office.
"They changed the ordinance so they don't have to measure the 50%," Bank said. "It was up to their interpretation."
Bank was relieved that this year the city left him alone.
But the law has not changed this year, according to Bedian. She said that this year no concerns were filed against him.
The St. Peters Police Department is actively investigating this crime. Sergeant Melissa Doss said a suspect was identified.
"I'm upset, and angry but also hurt. I cannot imagine the excuse it would be for this to be ok in [their] head." Bank said.
When spring arrives next year Bank's has vowed to plant again and every year after until he physically cannot plant anymore.
