Code of Ordinances
Hernando County, FL
Chapter 10 Community Appearance
Article II Landscaping
The landscape code for Hernando County, FL begins with a list of 21 reasons for the need for this ordinance. Some of the items are preserving natural vegetation, energy reduction, prevention of soil erosion, cleaning of polluted air and water, aesthetic reasons, and to provide natural habitat. This code applies to commercial, industrial, multi family residential, public service facilities, institutional, RV parks, and recreational lands not under the jurisdiction of any city within the county. The landscape code requires submittal of a landscape plan showing all proposed buildings, preserved trees and protected trees. The plan must be prepared by a landscape designer of landscape architect. The installation of planting must be approved prior to issuance of a certificate of occupancy.
The code requires a minimum of 15% of sites 1 acre or larger to be landscaped or 10% for site under 1 acre. A minimum of 15 trees per acre must either be protected or installed. Tree credit is given based on the size of the existing trees. Trees over 18” dbh must be preserved, as well as a minimum of 10 of the required 15 trees if existing on the site. The 10 existing trees per acre to be protected are those outside of the area of development. Tree preservation techniques during construction are clearly laid out with tree barricade requirements and prevention of grade changes around existing trees.
Trees planted to meet the minimum requirements must be at least 3 “ dbh and be given a minimum of 100 s.f. of area to grow. A minimum of 5 of the trees per acre must be shade trees and at least 5 trees per acre are required in parking lots of 25 spaces or more.
Vegetated buffers are required along street rights of way, incompatible land uses and the perimeter of parking lots. The buffers must be at least 5’ in width with a minimum of 40 plants per 500 s.f. of buffer area. Existing vegetation may be counted if located in the buffer areas. Opacity and height requirements are based on the type of buffer. The parking lot perimeter requirement applies to edges of the parking lot that are not adjacent to a street right of way.
A permanent irrigation system is required and is to be divided into high. Medium and low water use zones. No more than 50% of landscaping may be in the high water use zones. Drip, micro and other low volume emitters are required in areas outside of turf grass areas and high water usage zones. Rain/moisture sensors are also required for all zones.
This landscape code is fairly well rounded with requirements for tree preservation and the installation of new trees. Significant credit is given for trees based on the dbh encouraging preservation of existing trees, the protection of trees over 18” dbh also serves this purpose. The buffer requirements are standard with the exception of requiring the entire perimeter of a parking area to be buffered. Irrigation and requirements for careful water uses are provided in adequate detail. A weakness of this code is that the landscaping can be placed almost anywhere which may result in trees that are off in the distance and not really part of the site, the same is true with the requirement for parking areas. The code overall is strong in its protection of existing trees and its buffer requirements and should prevent the loss of much of the existing tree canopy. It is also encouraging to see as code with such high landscape requirements for a county, areas outside of a city are often not subject to these requirements.
Dan Farrah