Lawton, OK Landscaping Rules: Tree Trimming (2026)

City Code Section 20-1-103 places the duty to maintain sidewalks squarely on the owner, occupant, or user of property abutting a Lawton street. That duty covers more than pavement condition: the code requires the sidewalk and the space eight feet above it to stay free of obstacles, obstructions, and encroachments, whether natural or artificial. Trees are addressed directly in the section's second paragraph, which permits owners to grow trees on the parkway strip between the curb and the sidewalk but conditions that permission on keeping the limbs and branches pruned off the trunk at least eight feet above the sidewalk surface, with an equal eight-foot clearance for the spread of the canopy.

The rule effectively sets one clearance envelope, eight feet up and eight feet out, that a tree's lowest growth cannot enter once it overhangs a public walkway. The section also bars oil, grease, ice, snow, or water from collecting on the sidewalk, folding tree maintenance into the same basic upkeep obligation as snow removal or repairing a cracked slab. Because the standard sits in the streets and sidewalks chapter rather than the zoning or landscaping articles, it applies to any abutting owner citywide, not just to commercial developments subject to the separate landscaping point system in Section 6-1-5-186. There is no permit process to plant a parkway tree; the obligation attaches automatically once branches begin to overhang the walkway.