Hanover County, VA Landscaping Rules: Native Plants (2026)

Section 26-54 lays out the development standards and procedures that apply when land is rezoned to the RC, Rural Conservation District, which requires at least seventy percent of a district's net acreage to remain conservation area under Section 26-49. Subsection (e) lists the design standards the county expects a conceptual site plan to meet 'to the extent practicable,' including protecting stream valleys, wetlands, and steep slopes, preserving existing treelines and mature woodlands, and minimizing development on open fields. ' That standard sits alongside the district's broader evaluation criteria in subsection (g), which separately directs the Board to weigh whether a proposed RC development preserves treelines, mature woodlands, and existing vistas and avoids clearing highly erodible woodland slopes greater than ten percent, when deciding whether to approve the rezoning.

Because RC zoning is applied through a rezoning process rather than as a permitted use, the native-species requirement is enforced at the plan-approval stage: the Planning Department and Board of Supervisors review the conceptual site plan and landscaping plan for compliance before the district, and any resulting subdivision, is approved.