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