Size Decides Protection. Species Decides The Cost.
Most cities in this market use one threshold to answer both questions. Garland splits them, and understanding the split is most of what a commercial owner needs from Article 4.
Protection is by size: any species at six inches diameter or more, unless it’s on the unprotected list. Mitigation is by species, through the replacement ratios in Table 4-9. So two trees of identical size on the same site can carry obligations four times apart from each other.
That’s why an inventory here isn’t a formality. The species column is the one with money in it.
Table 4-9, And The Cliff Inside It.
Replacement is expressed as caliper inches planted per diameter inch removed, and the class a tree falls into changes the answer by a factor of eight.
Class One Replaces Two To One
Cedar elm, pecan, persimmon, the ashes, all oaks and all walnuts, at eighteen inches diameter or more. Two caliper inches of replacement for every diameter inch removed, which is the most expensive band in the table.
Class Three Replaces At Half
Hackberry, Arizona ash, willow, cottonwood, honey locust, mesquite, mulberry, silver maple. Half a caliper inch per diameter inch, and species in neither table drop to a quarter. Getting the identification right is worth real money.
Injury Is Charged Like Removal
Two hundred and fifty dollars per diameter inch of tree removed or injured. Injury means failing to follow the protection measures where that causes, or may reasonably be expected to cause, decline or death.
One Inch Doubles It
The Class 1 species list carries a size qualifier, and it’s the single most actionable fact in the Garland ordinance.
A cedar elm at seventeen inches diameter is Class 2 and replaces at 1:1. The same tree at eighteen inches is Class 1 and replaces at 2:1. One inch of growth doubles what you owe.
Unlike most compliance costs, that one is entirely knowable in advance from a measurement. On a site with a planned removal and a tree sitting near the line, the timing of the work becomes a budget decision rather than a scheduling one, and it’s worth measuring before it’s worth arguing.
The Inventory Has A Shelf Life
The Tree Inventory must be completed no more than two years, that’s 730 calendar days, before the date of submission. It also has to be prepared by a certified arborist or registered landscape architect.
That expiry is the provision most likely to catch a phased development. A survey commissioned for a project that then waits on financing, on a tenant, or on another approval quietly ages out while nothing about the trees has changed, and the resubmittal costs the survey again rather than costing an amendment.
Worth tracking against the submission date rather than the survey date, because those are frequently a long way apart.
Moving A Tree Earns More Than Replacing It
Garland is unusual in rewarding transplanting on a sliding scale rather than treating a moved tree as merely not-removed.
Credits run at one inch per inch under six inches DBH, two inches from six to twelve, three inches from twelve to twenty-four, and five inches at twenty-four or more. A large specimen in the wrong place can therefore be worth substantially more moved than felled and replaced.
Whether it survives the move is a separate question, and an honest one: transplanting a mature tree is a real intervention with a real failure rate. The credit makes it worth assessing rather than worth assuming, which is a distinction the ordinance doesn’t draw for you.
The Root Zone Is Whichever Is Larger
The critical root zone is a circle one foot in diameter for every inch of trunk caliper, or the drip line, whichever is greater. That “whichever is greater” matters on a wide-crowned tree, where the drip line reaches well past the formula.
Inside it, natural grade can’t be disturbed, and the area can’t be used for parking, equipment, material storage or chemical wash-out. Those four uses are exactly what a contractor does with the shaded flat ground next to a building, which is why the fence goes up before anybody needs somewhere convenient to put things.
The Instrument, City By City.
What each city actually uses to regulate a tree, taken from its own code. No two of these are the same document.
Plano
Article 17 of the Zoning Ordinance. The preservation plan IS the permit, replacement runs inch for inch from 8 to 30 inches and 1.5:1 above that, and a fee in lieu is available with the Director's approval.
Frisco
Subsection 4.01 of the Zoning Ordinance. A separate Tree Removal Permit, mitigation banded as a percentage of diameter removed from 0 to 300 percent, and a survey needing two seals rather than one.
Dallas
Article X, Landscape and Tree Conservation. Protected at 8 inches, mitigation waived across the development footprint up to 70 percent of the site, and topping defined and regulated by name.
Allen
Land Development Code Article VII. A credit ledger rather than a ratio, where removal costs exactly double what preservation earns, and a 90 day clock on the permit.
McKinney
Unified Development Code Article 4. Three protected tiers, mitigation doubling above 17 inches, and a perimeter zone beside existing housing where protected trees may not be altered at all.
Carrollton
Chapter 155. Replacement at 100 percent of the diameter removed, clear-cutting prohibited outright, and a survival obligation running two years past the end of the project.
Wylie
Zoning Ordinance Article 7. Enforced criminally as a misdemeanor at $100 per caliper inch, and protection is defined to exclude trees standing in easements, rights-of-way or the buildable area.
Richardson
No private-property tree ordinance at all. The tree chapter covers public trees only, which makes documentation the owner's protection rather than the city's.
- See All City Tree Ordinances