Lassen County, CA Landscaping Rules: Native Plants (2026)

Lassen County has no general ordinance requiring native-plant palettes for residential yards in the unincorporated area, and the county's natural setting is sagebrush steppe in the valleys and coniferous forest on the slopes. Property owners are free to keep native sagebrush, bunchgrasses, juniper, and pine subject mainly to fire defensible-space duties. For new and rehabilitated landscapes that require a permit, California's Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (MWELO) - applied statewide through CalGreen where a county has no stricter local ordinance - encourages low-water and climate-adapted plants, limits high-water-use species, and caps turf area. California Civil Code Section 4735 protects owners by prohibiting homeowners' associations from banning low-water-using plants or drought-tolerant landscaping and from enforcing purely aesthetic rules that prevent water-conserving landscaping. Importantly for a fire-prone county, vegetation near homes is regulated by fire risk rather than by native-versus-nonnative status: under California Public Resources Code 4291, even native brush, weeds, and ladder fuels must be thinned and spaced within the 100-foot defensible-space zone around structures in the State Responsibility Area. The county General Plan also recognizes native vegetation communities and water resources, but those policies operate through project-level planning review rather than a homeowner planting mandate.