Bartow County, GA Building Setbacks & Zoning: Lot Coverage Limits (2026)

Sec. 63 of the Bartow County Development Regulations, printed as Appendix B to the Code of Bartow County, sets minimum landscape requirements for the county's non-residential and multi-family zoning districts, and subsection (n) caps how much of a lot those projects can pave or build over: impervious surface areas shall not be allowed to cover more than 75 percent of the lot. The cap works together with the section's other landscaping mandates rather than in isolation. Subsection (m) requires every land surface not covered by buildings, structures, or paving, the remaining 25 percent or more of the lot, to be landscaped with grass, flowers, shrubs, or other approved plant material and shown on a landscaping and tree-protection plan submitted to the engineering department.

The same section requires a five-foot landscape strip around every building perimeter, a ten-foot landscaped buffer along any public street frontage with one tree per 30 linear feet of road frontage, and interior parking-lot islands, all of which eat into the paved area and reinforce the 75 percent ceiling in practice. A registered landscape architect licensed in Georgia must stamp the landscape plan, and the engineering department reviews it alongside the construction plans required under Sec. 62 before a permit issues. The developer must also post a landscape performance bond or letter of credit, typically equal to the cost of the required plant material, and a certificate of compliance from the design professional is required before a certificate of occupancy can be issued for the related structures. The impervious cap does not apply to single-family and two-family residential parking areas, which the ordinance treats as normally self-landscaping.