BARTOW, FL — The Polk County Commission approved a landscape ordinance designed to promote water conservation.
The ordinance, which has been revised several times, requires:
— A checklist of landscape and irrigation requirements to be filled out by applicants installing irrigation.
— Fifty percent of irrigation systems to be low-volume types or micro-irrigation.
— All non-turf areas to be served by low-volume irrigation or not irrigated at all.
— The use of Florida-friendly plants.
— No turf used in landscape areas less than four ft. wide.
— At least three in. of mulch used in planting beds and around trees.
— The addition of tree requirements, such as setbacks from power lines and paved surfaces, root barriers, plant grade and sunlight/soil-sensitive placement.
— Parking lots to include canopy trees and landscape islands that are large enough to support the trees in them.
— Root barriers, under the approved ordinance, exempts parking lots from the mandatory use of root barriers. Root barriers are placed around a tree’s root system to prevent it from damaging utility pipes, sidewalks or roadways.
“Polk landscaping ordinance approved; water conservation is the goal,” by Donna Kelly, Winter Haven News Chief, March 19
