TULSA, Oklahoma -

A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.

Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant
varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and
have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which
will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug
bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were
filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes,
strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut
tree, pecan trees and much more.

She got a letter from the city saying there had been a complaint about her yard.

She said she took pictures to meet with city
inspectors, but they wouldn't listen, so she invited them to her home so
they could point out the problem areas.

"Everything, everything needs to go," Morrison said they told her.

When she heard they wanted to cut it all down, she
called police. The officer issued her a citation so it could be worked
out in court.

She said she went to court on August 15, and the
judge told them to come back in October. But the very next day, men were
cutting down most of her plants.

They even cut down some of her trees -– ones that
bore fruit and nuts -– and went up next to her house and basically
removed everything in her front flower bed.

"I came back three days later, sat in my driveway, cried and left," Morrison said.

Morrison said she had a problem at her last
property with code enforcement, so this time, she read the ordinance,
which says plants can't be over 12-inches tall unless they're used for
human consumption. She made sure everything she grew could be eaten,
which she told the inspectors.

"Every word out of their mouth was, 'we don't care,'" Morrison said.

Morrison said she used many of the plants that were destroyed to treat her diabetes, high-blood pressure and arthritis.

"Not only are the plants my livelihood, they're my
food and I was unemployed at the time and had no food left, no medicine
left, and I didn't have insurance," Morrison said. "They took away my
life and livelihood."

Morrison finally went to court last week for the
citation she got last August at another property. The garden portion of
the citation was dismissed and she pleaded no contest to having an
inoperable truck in her driveway.

She filed a civil rights lawsuit this week, accusing the inspectors of overstepping their authority.

The City of Tulsa said it hasn't received the lawsuit yet, so it couldn't comment.