Walker County, GA Landscaping Rules: Native Plants (2026)

Section 22-183(a) sets out eight purposes for the county's landscaping standards, including protecting water resources by maintaining vegetative cover, encouraging the selection of native plant species for vegetation, reducing the impact of development on remaining natural vegetation stands, providing shade, reducing heat and glare, abating noise pollution, providing wildlife habitat, and buffering incompatible uses from each other. Subsection (b) exempts any lot or parcel where a single-family home is used as a residence from the entire landscaping section, though that exemption does not extend to residential subdivisions or other residential developments that require site plan approval, meaning a subdivision developer still has to meet the standards even though an individual homeowner does not.

Subsection (c) calls for diversity of plantings in all required landscape plantings rather than a monoculture. Subsection (d) is the enforceable prohibition: kudzu (Pueraria lobata) and the popcorn or Chinese tallow tree (Sapium sebiferum) cannot be installed as landscape material anywhere subject to the ordinance, regardless of district. These prohibited-species and native-plant provisions work alongside the buffer area requirements of section 22-184, which require landscaped buffer strips of 50 feet or more between residential property and commercial, industrial or recreational vehicle park uses, and required buffers must be periodically inspected by the County Office of Planning and Enforcement to confirm they are properly maintained.