La Habra, CA Landscaping Rules: Tree Trimming (2026)

Section 12.20.040, Tree Maintenance Responsibility, Clearance, splits responsibility for parkway trees between the city and adjoining property owners. Subsection A puts the parkway maintenance division foreman in charge of maintaining, planting and removing all official trees planted along city streets, except for watering and fertilizing. Subsection B shifts watering and fertilizing duty to the property owner adjacent to each parkway tree, requiring the owner to keep the tree watered and fertilized as needed to ensure its survival. Subsection C sets the clearance standard directly: trees along a city street must be pruned to give not less than twelve feet of clearance over sidewalks and not less than sixteen feet over streets, as the size of the tree allows.

Section 12.20.050 requires anyone doing maintenance work on a street tree, other than watering and fertilizing, to be qualified and to have that work approved by the division supervisor, so a property owner cannot simply have an unapproved crew trim a tree to meet the clearance figures. Section 12.20.060 separately bars placing stone, cement or other material around a tree's base that would block water reaching its roots, requiring an open, unpaved space of at least eighteen inches around the trunk. Section 12.20.100 backs the clearance rule with a nuisance remedy: if a tree's growth blocks a street, sidewalk or intersection sightline, the parkway maintenance division foreman can order it corrected within ten days and bill the owner if the division has to do the trimming itself. The chapter dates to Ordinance No. 1003, adopted in 1977.