Port Orange, FL Tree Protection: Parkway Planting (2026)

This street-tree provision lives inside the Planned Community-Agricultural (PC-A) district's own 'Streets and streetscape' subsection at Land Development Code Chapter 17, Section 29(i), rather than in the citywide landscaping chapter, so it governs plantings within the right-of-way of PC-A-zoned development specifically, the large master-planned tracts described earlier in the same section as requiring a minimum of 750 acres for a vacant parcel or 25 acres for a redevelopment district. The rule is discretionary, not mandatory: the code says the city 'may allow' street trees in the right-of-way rather than requiring them, and any planting has to be coordinated with the public utilities department and approved by the city council through a license agreement.

That license agreement carries a cost-shifting term: the licensee, meaning the developer or property owner who wants the trees planted, must pay for any damage the trees or their root systems later cause to city utility lines. The section also steers development layout choices, stating it is 'preferable' for utilities to sit in rear-yard alleys in developments where street trees are planned, and it bars planting street trees close to utility mains and service laterals in the right-of-way unless the development plans and field conditions show the trees will not cause damage.

Once a street tree is approved and planted, subsection (3) gives the developer a credit: shade trees placed in the right-of-way abutting a lot count toward that lot's own required front-yard and overall tree-planting totals, reducing how many additional trees must be planted inside the lot line itself. Because the provision is scoped to the PC-A district's own streetscape rules, it does not set a citywide parkway-tree standard for other Port Orange zoning districts; general landscaping and buffer requirements for those districts are set separately in Chapter 13.