Vermont's garden bill passed the House and exempted condos
Vermont's garden bill passed the House and exempted condos
2026-09-19 · Vermont · Legislation · Did not pass
Vermont's right-to-garden bill got further than any other association bill of the 2026 session — it passed a chamber — and it would never have applied to a Vermont condominium. It died in Senate committee on adjournment, May 29, 2026.
H.537, An act relating to the right to grow vegetable gardens, was introduced by Rep. Martin LaLonde of South Burlington on January 6, 2026. The House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry voted it out on March 13, 2026; the House passed it on third reading on March 20, 2026, on a voice vote with no roll call demanded. The Senate read it a first time and referred it to the Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs on March 25. There was one committee date, March 31. Nothing after that.1
The carve-out at the end
The bill would have added a new section to Title 27A voiding covenants against vegetable gardens “in areas designated for exclusive use of the unit owner”. Its final subsection read: “This section shall not apply to a condominium.”
In Vermont that exclusion is most of the market. VCIOA covers condominiums, planned communities and cooperatives; the exclusive-use outdoor space a garden provision is aimed at — a patio, a deck, an assigned yard strip — is characteristically a limited common element of a condominium.
The machinery it carried
H.537 was drafted on the same template Vermont used for its charger provisions: void the covenant, set a clock, add a penalty.
- 60-day deemed approval on an owner's application, the same figure every dead right-to-charge bill used;
- the owner pays installation, maintenance, water and electricity, and must disclose the garden to a buyer;
- a $1,000 civil penalty for an intentional violation by the association;
- an express list of restrictions an association could keep — requiring the garden be in good condition if visible from the street, requiring weeds and dead material to be cleared, limiting gardens in common areas, and banning pesticides.
Section 3 would separately have added 9 V.S.A. § 4456c, giving tenants a portable-container garden right.
Who was in the room
The House committee's witness record includes the Director of the Vermont Landlord Association on February 25, 2026 and an attorney from Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer — a firm with a Vermont community-association practice — on March 11, 2026. The Community Associations Institute's Vermont Legislative Action Committee reports that after its engagement, amendments preserved associations' ability to maintain aesthetic standards, correct violations, and require the clearing of weeds and dead plants.2 Those are the restrictions in the bill's carve-back list.
Why the death is not the end of it
Item (4) of the study Vermont ordered in Act 179 of 2026 is whether to require common interest communities to “permit the installation and use of vegetable gardens within a unit owner's designated exclusive use space.” The Office of Legislative Counsel must report on it by November 15, 2026.
That framing has no condominium exclusion in it. If a 2027 bill follows the study rather than H.537, the provision that made this one harmless to condominium boards is the first thing likely to go.
What the biennium rule means
Vermont runs a two-year biennium. A bill introduced in 2025 carries into 2026; a bill not enacted by sine die is dead. The 2026 session adjourned on May 29, 2026 — the House at 7:46 in the evening — and no veto session followed.3 H.537 cannot be revived, amended or taken up. Anything resembling it in 2027 will be a new bill with a new number, and a House vote in 2026 gives it no procedural head start.
What to watch next
Whether the sponsor refiles. Rep. LaLonde carried the bill through one chamber without a recorded dissent, which is the strongest position any Vermont association bill reached in the biennium.
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