Denton's Planning and Zoning Commission gets its first look Wednesday at a package of changes to the city's rules for saving trees and landscaping new development, the product of more than two years of work by city staff and the Development Code Review Committee.
The briefing is a work session at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Council Work Session Room at City Hall, 215 E. McKinney St. No vote is scheduled. According to the agenda information sheet, the session is meant to walk commissioners through the proposals and answer questions before the amendments come back for a public hearing.
How it started
The effort has two roots. When the City Council adopted an updated Water Conservation Plan in April 2024, development services staff were assigned to look for ways the landscaping section of the Denton Development Code could encourage saving water.
Later that year the council made a review of the tree preservation code a priority, and the review committee took up the tree rules in December 2024.
Staff and the committee worked through the landscape changes in early 2025 and the tree changes from May 2025 into this spring. The committee signed off on a summary of both in April.
What the drafts would change
Draft language shared with the review committee last month includes:
- Tree surveys with a shelf life. Surveys would have to be done within six months of a project's first submittal and would expire 24 months after submittal if work on the project stalls for more than nine months. The planning director could grant one six-month extension.
- Fencing for heritage trees. When heritage trees are protected separately from other trees on a site, developers would put up a chain-link fence at least six feet tall around them during construction.
- Less turf. At apartment and nonresidential sites, turf grass could cover no more than 30% of the required landscape area, and all of it would have to come from the city's approved planting list. Athletic fields and similar uses could be exempted.
Staff also list changes to street tree requirements, the point system used to score landscape plans, separate standards for properties at the city's airport, mitigation rates tied to the city's tree canopy goals, and relief for infill lots.
