Jackson County, GA Tree Protection: Parkway Planting (2026)

Sec. 448 layers extra landscaping standards onto the East and West Jackson Corridor Overlay Districts, on top of the tree-protection and landscaping rules that apply countywide under Article 12 of the Unified Development Code. Along any public or private access street, the required landscape strip must be at least 15 feet wide. Within that strip, the code requires one shrub for every five feet of frontage plus street trees, with spacing set by an approved species list rather than a single blanket number, since a large canopy tree like a white oak needs far more room than a crape myrtle.

Jackson County's Department of Public Development can approve substitute species not on the list, but only if the applicant submits a planting plan, prepared and stamped by a registered landscape architect, showing placement, common names, minimum size, and required spacing. To keep the corridor's tree canopy from being wiped out by a single pest or disease, no more than 25 percent of the trees installed in a development can belong to any one genus, and no more than half of the street trees in a single development can be drawn from the small-tree species on the approved list.

The rule applies only inside the mapped corridor overlay districts; parkway or street tree planting elsewhere in unincorporated Jackson County falls back on the countywide landscaping standards in Article 12 rather than Sec. 448's 15-foot strip and genus caps.