green gardening

Just wondering if anyone else is running into these annoyances - my  sim lives in the Jasmine Suites apartment. the current N.A.P.s include green gardening. I have 4 planters and 2 verticle planters in my apartment, but for some reason, I'm still getting fined for not being in compliance with the initiative. I tried bragging to the inspector about the planters (i saw on another site that someone mentioned you needed to do this), but it didn't seem to make a difference. I'm just wondering if there's something i'm missing that i should be doing. anyone run into this and/or do you know what i'm doing wrong?

A 2nd annoyance I'm seeing is with the Promote Creative Arts N.A.P. in that lumps of clay are multiplying like Tribbles. I've read others had this issue, but the lumps were spawning in their inventory, these are spawning in the hallway of the apartment and i can't remove them. my sim can pick up a lump, but then she just takes it outside and sets it down. she can't put it in her inventory, and even with cheats, i can't remove them because they're in the hall. It started with 5 lumps, there are now 13 lumps in the hallway and 2 outside on the ground (the two my sim moved). 

Neither of these two issues are affecting the game play much, they're really just annoying, and i'm hoping someone might have an idea if /how i can fix these issues.