Waynesville, MO Landscaping Rules: Tree Trimming (2026)

Section 597.050 sets a minimum fifteen-foot clearance that must be maintained over walkways, streets and alleys throughout Waynesville, for reasons of public safety. Within that same safety rationale, hazardous or dead limbs of trees, whether standing in the public community forest (street trees, park trees and other City-owned vegetation) or the private community forest (trees on private property not under City easement), must be pruned or removed from living trees whenever they overhang a walkway, street, alley or other public area. The Code gives the City itself the right to prune any overhanging hazardous or dead limb that endangers public welfare, and it makes the City responsible for the cost of that thinning, pruning or removal, since the Code treats the overhang as a public-safety issue rather than a private maintenance one.

The rule sits in Chapter 597, Regulation of Planting, Maintenance and Removal of Trees, Shrubs and Other Plants, which the City Council adopted by Ordinance No. 1306 in 2007 and which the Community Forest Manager, appointed by the City Council, administers together with the Tree Board established under Chapter 155. Section 597.070 backs the clearance rule with the City's separate right to plant, prune, maintain and remove trees within street, alley and utility-easement rights-of-way whenever public safety requires it.