Rockingham County, VA Tree Protection: Parkway Planting (2026)

01 requiring any use or development needing a site plan to first submit a landscape plan approved by the zoning administrator. That landscape plan must show, among other things, the general location and character of tree planting, buffers, and screening, and must account for existing mature tree growth, which the ordinance directs be preserved on-site to the maximum extent possible. Because street landscaping is folded into that same landscape-plan approval rather than given its own separate permit, a developer along a state-maintained road effectively has to design frontage tree planting to the VDOT guidelines' species and clear-zone spacing before the zoning administrator will sign off on the broader landscape plan for the project.

03, separately requires at least three percent of any parking area over 4,500 square feet to be devoted to internal landscape islands with one deciduous tree per 150 square feet of landscaped area, showing the county leans on outside technical standards, VDOT's guidelines for streets, its own numeric thresholds for parking lots, rather than writing a standalone parkway-tree ordinance.