Rowan County, NC Landscaping Rules: Artificial Turf (2026)

Chapter 21 defines 'built-upon area' as any portion of a lot covered by impervious or partially impervious material, including buildings, pavement, gravel roads and parking, and recreation surfaces like tennis courts. Section 21-4 then lists six categories the county does not count toward that total, and artificial turf is the sixth: turf manufactured to allow water to drain through the backing and installed according to the manufacturer's specifications over a pervious surface. The exclusion matters because Rowan County regulates built-upon area most heavily inside its WS-II and WS-III water supply watershed overlay districts under Section 21-33, where a parcel's built-upon percentage caps how much of the lot can be covered before triggering density averaging or stormwater controls under Section 21-33(2)f.

A homeowner replacing a lawn with synthetic turf over bare soil, sand, or a permeable base keeps that square footage out of the built-upon calculation on a Planning and Development site plan; laying the same turf over compacted fill, concrete, or a solid membrane loses the exclusion because water cannot drain through to the ground below. S. 113A-85, and pedestrian-only landscaping material such as gravel or mulch, so turf sits alongside those as a defined carve-out rather than a blanket exemption for all synthetic surfacing.