Queen Anne's County, MD Tree Protection: Parkway Planting (2026)

Section 18:1-27.1 of the Queen Anne's County Code creates the Neighborhood and Village Center (NVC) District, a zone the County Commissioners tied to lands designated as the Chester Village Expansion Area in the Chester/Stevensville Community Plan. The street tree rule therefore applies in unincorporated Queen Anne's County, in the Chester and Stevensville area of Kent Island, and not in Centreville, Queenstown or any other incorporated town, each of which follows its own code.

Subsection O, titled Landscaping requirements, sets the planting standard. Street trees must have a minimum three-inch caliper and must be planted at thirty-foot intervals along sidewalks in three transect zones: Low Residential (T4), Medium Residential (T5), and Mixed/Neighborhood Village Center (T6). Trees are not required when an arcade is provided in the T6 center. Paragraph (3) adds a design rule: uniformity of tree types shall be used as a design element to provide visual identity to the neighborhood and reinforce the hierarchy of streets.

On any neighborhood boulevard (NB), median trees and landscaping are required. Median trees should be a minimum one-and-one-half-inch caliper, spaced 20 feet on center, and medians can also hold shrubs and plant groundcover. Subsection P(3) ties the planting to the sidewalk itself: pedestrian pathways include a planting or buffer strip to separate pedestrians from the street and provide room for streetlight poles, pedestrian amenities, street trees, and similar items.

Parking lots have their own tree standard in O(8). For all parking lots with more than six spaces, the landscaped area is a minimum of 20% of the total parking area, and one native shade tree that grows to a minimum height of 40 feet at maturity is required for each 300 square feet of that open space. Native shade trees must have a minimum caliper of 2 1/2 inches at the time of planting.

Rural residential subdivisions follow a looser rule. Section 18:1-174B(2) says street trees shall be planted at one-hundred to one-hundred-fifty-foot intervals in rural residential subdivisions, but it frames its list as design guidelines for major cluster subdivisions in the AG, CS, NC, E, SE, SR and VC Districts. The Planning Director and Planning Commission consider those guidelines in review and may not approve an application that has not made a practical and good faith effort to comply.