Gardena, CA Landscaping Rules: Artificial Turf (2026)

Chapter 9.72, the Vacant Property Registry Program adopted by Ordinance 1882 in 2025, requires the community development department's code enforcement division to inspect any property under a recorded notice of default, trustee's sale, or bank ownership and to hold the beneficiary, trustee or owner to specific yard-maintenance standards under § 9.72.040. Subsection D requires visible yards to be landscaped and continuously maintained through pruning, mowing, weeding, litter removal, fertilizing, replacement of dead plants, and regular watering. It defines acceptable landscaping broadly: grass, ground covers, bushes, shrubs, hedges, decorative rock or bark, or 'artificial turf/sod designed specifically for residential installation,' and it cross-references the design standards of the zoning code's landscape regulations at § 18.42.075 and the planning and public works division's own landscape standards.

The same subsection excludes weeds, gravel, broken concrete, asphalt, plastic sheeting, mulch, and indoor-outdoor carpet from counting as landscaping, so a bare gravel yard or carpet substitute does not satisfy the rule even though artificial turf does. Because this standard sits inside the vacant-property registry chapter rather than a general residential-zoning landscaping section, it binds beneficiaries, trustees and owners of registrable foreclosed, distressed, or abandoned residential parcels, not every occupied single-family lot in the city; violations are a public nuisance under § 9.72.040 and can bring code-enforcement action or civil fines up to $1,000 per day under § 9.72.080(D).

Occupied homes elsewhere in the city look to the zoning code's landscape chapter, § 18.42.075, which separately caps ordinary turf grass at 5 percent of new multifamily, commercial, or industrial plantings but does not itself address artificial turf.