St. Johns County, FL Fence Regulations: Material Restrictions (2026)

Sec. 4, under the Palm Valley Overlay District's development standards, prohibits chain link, barbed wire and similar fencing materials in any required Front Yard and requires landscaping or berming to block the fence from view from any Ponte Vedra/Palm Valley Overlay District Delineated Roadway. The overlay's separate Sec. 07 fence height rule caps most fences and walls at 4 feet outside building restriction lines, allows 8 feet on a rear lot line that meets a Delineated Roadway right-of-way, 6 feet next to a borrow pit or drainage pond, and lets commercial-zoned lots use 6-foot side and rear fences with posts, columns, gates or lights up to 8 feet.

Retaining walls are capped at 4 feet with 40 feet of separation required between walls built to add cumulative height. This same front-yard chain link and barbed wire ban is repeated for the Mid-Anastasia Overlay District at Sec. D, and equivalent bans apply inside the North Coastal Corridor, Vilano Beach Town Center and West Augustine Overlay Districts. Outside these named overlay districts, the county's general residential fence standard at Sec. 12 sets height limits (6 to 8 feet on side/rear lines, 4 feet within 25 feet of the front line) but does not itself ban chain link or barbed wire, so the material ban is an overlay-specific rule tied to the Growth Management-administered design overlays, not a countywide fencing material code.