El Monte, CA Tree Protection: Parkway Planting (2026)

060(D), adopted with the current Esperanza Village specific plan under Ordinance No. 010. Where possible along the three named streets, the plan calls for a continuous landscaped parkway between the sidewalk and the street: four feet wide on Durfee Avenue, five feet on Gilman Road, and ten feet on Kerrwood Street, planted with a mix of ground covers, shrubs and trees to buffer pedestrians from traffic. If a parkway cannot be accommodated because of insufficient space, the guideline instead calls for landscaped planters with street trees in lieu of the continuous strip.

The street trees themselves must be a minimum 24-inch box specimen at installation, larger stock than the 15-gallon size typically planted, so canopy establishes faster along the frontage. The broader landscape guidelines in the same subsection require the plant palette to draw from species rated low or moderate water use under the Water Use Classification of Landscape Species and to favor native or Southern California-naturalized, non-invasive shrubs and groundcovers. This is a narrow, project-specific standard: it governs only the Esperanza Village specific plan area and does not set citywide parkway or street tree requirements, which are instead handled through the city's separate Tree Protection and Preservation Ordinance.