As a homeowner, you would want your home to look beautiful in every way. Be it enhancing the natural look of your home or developing the overall aesthetics, you can’t really undermine the need for gardening and landscaping your home. Read this article to know about gardening and landscaping laws in Virginia.
However, there’s a catch with it. Say you want to design the garden of your home or design the landscape of the garden by yourself. Sure enough, you can do it, but you need to make sure that your design is complying with the regulation and requirements of your state. You cant simply go around planting and designing at your whim. Each state has its own set of rules which you need to adhere to in order to avoid legal troubles. If you go for a professional solution, these laws and regulations will be covered. However, if you want to get it done yourself, you should better check these out. And in this article, we will focus on the gardening and landscaping laws in Virginia.
Contents
Getting Started
To have a garden or a landscape design, you need to submit a formal review proposal to the city council. The city council will review your proposal to see whether it is compliant with the state regulation or not. However, this rule doesn’t apply to you if you are the owner of a single-family residence. In that case, you can start your gardening and landscaping without a formal review from the city council. But you would still need to ensure that you adhere to the gardening and landscaping requirements which we will discuss later in the article.
Processing the Plan
We have already mentioned above that you won’t have to submit any formal review proposal of your gardening and landscaping proposal to your council office if it is a single-family residence. However, you still cannot proceed to make your garden as per your personal desire. You need to have an outlined plan for gardening and any form of landscaping. The design and processes of implementation must adhere to the rules and regulations set by the state and the council office. The plan itself is like an essential document which you need to keep for any formal audit.
Contents of the Plan
Whether it’s gardening and landscaping for a commercial area or for a single-family residence, the content of the plan is applicable for both. The difference is that the content in the case of the commercially built space needs to be reviewed beforehand by the city council. The contents of the plan include:
- Size, location, and type of plants including the screening material that you plan to use in your garden and landscaping.
- Any existing trees that are of more than 6 inches calipers or any forest land should come under the protection of the forestry division and hence should be preserved.
- Any type of pre-existing landscape design that needs to be retained.
- Type of utilities available.
- Water facilities for the plantation in the garden as well as the drainage pattern of the garden.
- Maintenance plan for the garden and the landscape.
Minimum Standards
There are some minimum standards that are required to be followed in the urban as well as the industrial areas of Virginia. While creating the landscape you need to make sure that there is at least a 5-foot gap on each side of the landscape in the business district and a 10-foot gap on each side of the landscape in the industrial district.
The approved limit of sidewall should be at least 6 feet tall on the side of the walkways. In case of any overhead wire lines, the limit on the trees should be 10 meters. On average, the limit on the trees tends to be from 10 to 15 meters.
In addition to that, in the case of landscaping, you need to ensure that there is no vehicular damage to the garden and landscape covered with plantation. If required, the plantation should be put inside a wall on the pavement in order to ensure there is no degradation and harm created over time.
There is no specific planation limit in Virginia and you can plant as per your wish in the region. The only compliance is to make sure that your plantation follows the height limits.
There can always be an exception to the existing regulation and in the case of industrial landscaping, the city council agent may wave certain regulations depending on the situation.
Final Thoughts
Every state has certain rules and regulations regarding gardening and landscaping and Virginia is no different. The laws in the state of Virginia are strictly adhered to and as a new home or business owner, you might find yourself in trouble for not clearly following them.
In this article, we tried to be comprehensive about the laws that are imperative to the gardening and landscaping. We hope you would be careful enough to comply with these regulations and avoid unnecessary hassle.
Also Read: Gardening and Landscaping Laws in Washington – State Gardener
