These common design components are all composed of an ordered assembly of trees, shrubs, ground covers and landscape structures that have been described in the written law.

Understanding the visual clues of green laws is essential to understanding written landscape laws.

Visual Clues

The visual image of a landscape law is not hard for trained observers to see. The clues are obvious and they are green. In cities and counties like Ann Arbor Mich., Santa Monica, Calif., Cary, N.C., or Pinellas, Hillsborough, Collier Counties, Fla., visual clues are everywhere. When you see clipped hedges separating property, you are in a community with a landscape ordinance. When you see evenly spaced tree plantings along streets, you are in a community that requires street yard planting on private or street tree plantings on public land. Layered shrub buffers screening trash collection areas, loading docks and equipment collection spaces is another clue that a community has enacted a landscape ordinance.

One of the most obvious clues that a community has a landscape ordinance in effect is when travelers and visitors spot groves of preserved and protected trees that are either used as specimen groves or heavily wooded boundary lines. When sensitive habitats such as wetlands, stream edges, steep slopes and bedrock outcrops have been preserved from development you have a positive sign that the community has enacted a habitat preservation clause within its landscape ordinance. You can really see this clue well in communities like Mandeville, Louisiana, The Woodlands, Texas and Research Triangle, North Carolina. It is striking in its affect; it is livable in its reality.

Visual clues are orderly and predicable. Communities with landscape ordinances on the books do appear greener, have a higher sense of order and design and seem to be more prosperous. They surely seem more beautiful to visitors. Communities like South Holland, Illinois, Naples, Florida, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Dunwoody, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky all value their tree cover and look upon the protection of this resource as an environmental necessity and a lifestyle choice. In these towns, tree protection and preservation is written into law, and it is vigorously enforced.

Landscape laws can also be seen in older established communities. Older communities like Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and New Orleans, Louisiana all exhibit visual expression of landscape laws. These communities are writing laws to protect what remains of the inner city urban forest, perhaps even vestiges or remnants of the original native forest. Even New York City recently enacted a sustainable parking lot landscaping code. (A future topic for this column.) It will change the look of the city.

Some communities use landscape laws and the visual imagery they project to increase tourism and promote economic development. This is clearly seen across South Florida and in beach communities along the Gulf Coast. Orange County, Fla. and Orlando, Fla. have long used landscape laws to make their “magic kingdom” truly unique to wintertime visitors from the north. Hedges used for screening parking lots cover this entire area with a wrap of green 36?EUR??,,????'?? tall. Often of the same plant Ficus benjamina or Ilex cornuta ?EUR??,,????'??Burfordii Nana?EUR??,,????'???. Winter Park, Florida near Orlando is perhaps is the capital of hedges in the United States.

Imagine the Written Word

Ultimately one must image the visual image from the words of the law.

In Garner, North Carolina, the law says “large shade trees are to planted every 50 feet along the street frontage.” In reality, this is seen as a naturally mulched landscape consisting of a combination of evergreen and deciduous trees. Together they make a charming naturalized evergreen streetside planting composition that cannot be visualized from the words of the law alone.

Vehicular use area screens are proposed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in which the visual screens shall be designed, planted, maintained and calculated according to the following design standards. Screens shall be planted in strip a minimum of three feet in width and shall extend the length of the VUA. The planting design of this strip may be a hedge 36 inches in height or a mixed planting of shrubs, small trees and flowering plants all evergreen or a combination screen consisting of any proportions of planted screening berms, planted low masonry walls or mixed planting. Plants may be installed in single rows, double rows or staggered rows as the landscape design may require. Small trees when they are used in the design shall be spaced no closer than 20 feet on center.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan the landscape law calls for a landscape buffer strip to be used as a parking lot screen. “This planting space is to be at least 10 feet in width. The screen is to be planted with deciduous or evergreen trees planted on average of 30 feet on center.”

These written words translate into strong visual imagery. See, you can do it too.