Sumter County, FL Landscaping Rules: Native Plants (2026)

Sumter County's buffer standards, codified at Section 13-802, require a landscaped screen along outer parcel lines whenever the site's use or zoning triggers one of the code's four buffer types, Type A through Type D, each defined by a minimum width and a set number of canopy and understory trees per hundred linear feet. Within the plant-specification standards that fill out those buffer types, Section 13-802(h)(3)e sets a native-species floor: thirty percent of the trees shall be native and drought tolerant species, and no tree species shall account for more than seventy-five percent of the total number of trees.

The rule does two things at once: it guarantees a minimum share of native and drought-tolerant stock in every required buffer, and it prevents an applicant from meeting that minimum with a single native species planted as a monoculture, since no species, native or not, may exceed three-quarters of the buffer's total tree count. The same subsection separately encourages, without mandating, wider use of native material: Section 13-802(h)(2)b states that preservation and protection of existing native species of plant materials is strongly encouraged, and applicants may use existing on-site native vegetation to satisfy the buffer planting requirement outright rather than installing new stock, provided the preserved vegetation meets the section's size specifications.

Development Services checks compliance against the landscape plan submitted with site plan review, cross-referencing the tree count and species list against Tables 13-802A and 13-802B, which set which buffer type applies between which zoning districts and along which rights-of-way.