Tree Ordinance

Did you know that Knoxville already has requirements in the city codes to plant a certain number of trees in new residential and commercial developments? Parking lots are required to have one tree per every 5000 square feet, and new residential developments are required to have eight trees per acre. However, this part of the code is rarely, if ever, enforced. Read the Knoxville Tree Protection Ordinance here.

Members of the Knoxville Tree Board have been working for years to update these often-ignored codes into a workable tree ordinance to cover not just trees in the city, but all of Knox County. In support of this effort, Knoxville/Knox County Metropolitan Commission has issued a draft Tree Conservation and Planting Plan for Knox County. These proposed ordinances form a framework to provide guidelines for:

Protecting key resources, including ridges and riparian areas,
Planting programs for specific types of development, including parking lots and buffers between residential and other land uses,
Planting programs on public grounds, particularly schools and park and library sites,
Tree conservation and landscape improvements along rural roads, local streets, cross-county arterials, and interstates, and
Standards and practices for planting trees.

Read this excellent synopsis of the history of Knoxville's tree management in this Hellbender Press article by Rikki Hall, called The Oaks Just Shake Their Heads.