Your Parkway Tree Isn't Yours to Trim. Five L.A. Permits Decide Who Can Touch What.

Start at the trunk. Where it stands — parkway, private lot, protected species — decides the permit, the price and the penalty.

You're wondering whether the tree between your sidewalk and the curb is yours to trim. It isn't. The city's own building-permit bulletin, Information Bulletin P/ZC 2024-022, puts it in a single sentence: property owners must apply for and obtain a permit from the Board of Public Works or its designated officer at StreetsLA's Urban Forestry Division "prior to removing, trimming or root pruning any tree within the public right of way." It cites two sections of the municipal code, 62.162 and 62.169, and the test it states is where the tree stands — not who planted it, and not who has been watering it since.

That is a rule about a great many objects. StreetsLA's Urban Forestry Division says it controls and maintains over 660,000 street trees and more than 240 acres of landscaped medians, drawn from over a thousand species growing in the public right-of-way. Four kinds of palm account for a startling share of it: Mexican Fan Palm at 42,000, Queen Palm at 10,800, Canary Island Date Palm at 10,200 and California Fan Palm at 3,000, each figure published separately by the division. We added them — 66,000 trees, one in ten of the city's entire street inventory, before you count the thirty-odd other palm species it says are also out there.

But the parkway is only one of the places a tree can stand, and the place decides the rule. Los Angeles runs five separate tree permits, plus an ordinance that reaches onto private ground and protects seven native species by name. What follows is the four situations you can be in, each one laid against the same four questions: which rule applies, who decides, what it takes, and what it costs to skip.

Situation 1: The tree stands in the parkway, a median, or any other public street

The rule. LAMC 62.162 and 62.169, as cited in the bulletin above. A permit before you remove it, trim it, or prune its roots. There is a fourth act the code treats separately: under LAMC 62.174, quoted in the same bulletin, no person may pile building material or other material about a street tree in any manner that will injure it. Contractors' staging areas are a tree violation waiting to be written.

Who decides. StreetsLA's Urban Forestry Division, acting for the Board of Public Works.

What it takes to get a removal approved. Start from the division's posture, which it states plainly: city policy "is directed towards the preservation of all parkway trees and does not provide for removal unless the tree is dead or cannot be trimmed and/or root pruned to be made safe." Then it lists the six circumstances in which a removal permit may nonetheless be considered:

Off-grade sidewalk replacement.
Sewer line replacement, relocation, or installation.
Water main or natural gas line repair, relocation, or installation.
Off-grade driveway or driveway apron replacement.
New driveway installation, or relocation of an existing driveway.
Structure construction requiring tree removal.

Read that list for what isn't on it. Leaf litter isn't. Fruit drop isn't. Shade on a solar array isn't, and neither is the view. Every one of the six is an infrastructure conflict — something under the tree that has to be dug up. If your reason isn't a pipe, a slab or a building, the application starts from behind.

One threshold worth knowing before you plan a project: if three or more trees are to be removed, a report must be presented to the Board of Public Works. Below three, the division issues or denies on its own. At three, a public body reads it.

What it costs to skip. The bulletin lists the enforcement actions that follow a confirmed violation, and for street trees there are four: a misdemeanor, by the Bureau of Street Services' Investigation and Enforcement Division; an administrative citation, ACE, by the same division; a delay in issuance of the certificate of occupancy; and a notice to comply imposing corrective measures.

Situation 2: The tree stands on your own lot, and it is on the city's protected list

The rule. LAMC 46.00 through 46.06, the Protected Tree and Shrub Ordinance. No person may relocate or remove a protected tree or shrub without first obtaining a permit from the Board of Public Works. The Fire Department publishes the operative sentence of LAMC 46.02 verbatim on its own site, because its own rule points there: all fire clearance, it says, shall be performed to comply with LAMC 46.00 through 46.06.

Which trees. Four trees and two shrubs are named, and one oak is named to be excluded. The protected trees are the oaks — Valley Oak (Quercus lobata), California Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia), and any other oak indigenous to California, but expressly not Scrub Oak (Quercus berberidifolia) — along with Southern California Black Walnut (Juglans californica), Western Sycamore (Platanus racemosa) and California Bay (Umbellularia californica). The protected shrubs are Mexican Elderberry (Sambucus mexicana) and Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia). StreetsLA publishes a photographic guide to all seven, which is the fastest way to settle an argument about what is growing in your yard.

How big. Four inches. The ordinance covers any of those species measuring four inches or more in cumulative diameter, four and a half feet above ground level at the base. Cumulative is the word that catches people: a multi-stemmed sycamore or a low-branching bay is measured across all its trunks and stems together, not by its thickest one. Four inches of cumulative diameter is not a big tree.

One exclusion. The definition does not reach a tree or shrub grown or held for sale by a licensed nursery, or one planted or grown as part of a planting program. Stock in a pot is stock in a pot.

What changed, and when. The city has protected native oaks since the Native Oak Protection Ordinance of 1982. The current shape of the rule dates to Ordinance 186873, adopted December 15, 2020 and effective February 4, 2021. Los Angeles City Planning's own summary of that ordinance lists three changes: Mexican Elderberry and Toyon were added, the measurement became cumulative across trunks and stems, and the replacement ratio changed to 4:1. Four new trees for one removed is the number to price a removal against.

What it costs to skip. Here the bulletin's list is shorter and heavier. A notice to comply, as with street trees — and then one penalty the bulletin marks as applying to private-property native protected tree violations only: "Withholding or revocation of Building permits for a period of up to 10 years." Not a fine. A decade in which the city can decline to permit work on the parcel.

Situation 3: The tree stands on your own lot and is not on that list

Then the Protected Tree and Shrub Ordinance is not your rule. It reaches those seven species at that size, and the only private-property tree permit on StreetsLA's permits page is the one for native and protected trees.

That is not the same as "go ahead," and this is the gray zone rather than a clean answer. Three other things can still be true of a tree on private ground. A protected tree on the neighboring parcel can have a drip line that crosses onto yours, and the ordinance protects the root zone, not the property line. A project on your lot that touches the parkway at all is back in Situation 1. And a parcel carrying conditions from a discretionary planning approval carries whatever that approval said about trees, which is a document question, not a species question. If any of those three might be you, the division's number, below, is cheaper than finding out afterwards.

Situation 4: The tree is one the city has already made a monument

Several street tree locations in Los Angeles are designated Historic-Cultural Monuments, and StreetsLA applies special policies to all of them. No monument tree may be removed without public posting, notification of intent to the Historic-Cultural Monument Commission, and a public hearing before the Board of Public Works — the exception being a removal in the interest of public safety after inspection by a division certified arborist. And no pruning permit at all may be issued for a monument street tree without the written approval of Urban Forestry Division management.

We counted the entries on the division's list: ten bullets, but Monument #49, the olive trees on Lassen Street between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Farralone Avenue, is printed twice. Nine distinct locations, then. They include the Deodar Cedars on Los Feliz Boulevard between Riverside Drive and Western Avenue (Monument #67), the Moreton Bay Figs on Vermont Avenue between Los Feliz Boulevard and Aberdeen Avenue (#940), the Coral trees on San Vicente Boulevard between Bringham Avenue and 26th Street (#148), the California Peppers on Canoga Avenue (#93), the Sycamores on Bienvenida Avenue south of Sunset Boulevard (#465), the Camphors in the 1200 block of Lakme Avenue (#509), the Deodar Cedars on White Oak Avenue (#41), and the median palms on Highland Avenue (#94). If your address is on one of those blocks, the tree in front of it has a monument number.

"Removal" is a word that does not require a saw

This is the part of the ordinance most likely to catch a homeowner who never intended to touch a tree at all, and it is worth quoting because the drafting is deliberate. Under LAMC 46.02, the terms "removed" and "removal" include "any act that will cause a protected tree or shrub to die, including, but not limited to, acts that inflict damage upon the root system or other part of the tree or shrub by fire, application of toxic substances, operation of equipment or machinery, or by changing the natural grade of land by excavation or filling the drip line area around the trunk."

Regrading a slope. Backfilling for a patio. Parking a bobcat over the roots. The bulletin's construction-phase guidance says the same thing in the builder's register: applicants are fully responsible for protecting protected trees from impact caused by grading, by the operation of equipment or machinery, or by changing the natural grade by excavation or filling within the drip line in a way that causes a tree to die. The tree can be standing and green on the day the inspector visits and the violation can already have happened.

The five permits, and the two the city gives away

StreetsLA's permits page lists six items under Trees and Landscaping. Five of them have the word tree in the name, and those five are the ones this page is about: a root prune permit, a prune permit, a removal permit, a planting permit, and a separate private-property native and protected tree removal permit.

Two of the five are free, and both of them are free for the same reason — the city wants to know.

The root prune permit is no-fee. The division states that it does not root prune parkway trees as an interim measure to stop sidewalk damage or to keep roots out of private property, and that property owners may do the root pruning themselves, at their own expense, by obtaining a no-fee permit. That is the whole bargain: the city will not do the work, and will not charge you for permission to.

The planting permit is no-fee. All tree planting in the right-of-way requires one, issued by the Urban Forestry Division, and the division says the permit exists so it can update the street tree inventory and manage new plantings. A tree planted without one is a tree missing from the inventory the division manages from.

For the prune and removal permits, the pages we read post no price. If the fee matters to your budget, ask before you apply: the division's customer care desk is at 213-847-3077, and bss.urbanforestry@lacity.org is the address the bulletin gives for tree permits and clearances. All five applications route through the StreetsLA online application portal, and on the three permit pages that publish their review sequence the shape is identical: the division receives the application, inspects the location, and either issues the permit or denies it on the ground that the tree can be preserved by re-design.

What the city asks back

A permit to plant comes with specifications, and they are not suggestions. The division requires a minimum 15-gallon tree, installed with two untreated ten-foot lodgepole wooden stakes and secured with two rubber ties to the city's standard plan; linear root control barriers may be required. And there is a commitment attached that outlasts most people's interest in the subject: the permittee agrees to maintain the tree for a five-year establishment period and to replace it if necessary.

You do not choose the species, either. The division publishes a street tree selection guide of 150 species approved for the public right-of-way, an arborist conducts an on-site inspection to match the species to the site, and the division states in terms that it is the final arbiter of what can be planted. Tree well size, parkway width, overhead and underground utilities, soil, spacing and proximity to buildings all feed that call.

The rules that ride along with a prune permit

A street tree prune permit does not simply authorize cutting; it authorizes cutting to a standard. The division's published do's and don'ts require a qualified arborist certified by the Western Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture and holding a valid C61 or C49 state contractor's license. Cuts are made just outside the branch bark ridge and collar, with no flush cuts and no stubs left. Seldom should more than 25 percent of a tree's foliage be removed. Crown raising is done to the heights printed on the trim permit. And topping cuts are prohibited outright, with the division listing the reasons: topping invites insects and decay, produces weak new growth, depletes the tree's energy stores and reduces photosynthesis.

There is one more line in that section that a homeowner hiring a crew should read twice, because it moves liability: federal and state law prohibit the destruction of raptors, migratory birds and song birds, and the division states that it is the contractor's or permittee's responsibility to ensure those laws are not violated while a pruning permit is executed. A nest in the canopy is the permit-holder's problem.

The bill that lands on you anyway

Here is the asymmetry at the heart of this subject, and the city does not hide it. You may not touch the parkway tree without the city's permission. You are nonetheless responsible for the concrete it lifts.

Under LAMC 62.104(b), which the division cites directly, maintenance of sidewalks, curbs and driveway approaches is the responsibility of the abutting property owner. Sewer laterals go the same way: because a lateral serves a single lot rather than the general public, the division states that construction, maintenance and repair of house connection sewer laterals lie with the property owner, and that all sewer lateral repair and associated tree costs — including root pruning and tree removal — are completely at the property owner's expense. The division will help the owner get the necessary permits. It will not pay.

Two useful routes exist when a tree actually fails. A fallen or falling tree or limb blocking the right-of-way is a "tree emergency," and the division asks that it go into MyLA311 under that category immediately. And where a tree failure causes damage, a damage claim form is obtained from the City Clerk's office, at (213) 978-1133 or at the Clerk's public counter, Room 395, City Hall, 200 N. Spring Street, entrance on Main Street.

Where to look your own tree up

Three public records are worth opening before you pick up the phone.

The inventory. StreetsLA contracted Davey Resource Group to conduct what it calls the first inventory of the city's canopy in decades, with licensed arborists visiting and assessing each street tree, stump and vacant planting location. The division publishes the result for the public to search, and it covers trees on streets managed by StreetsLA and in parks managed by Recreation and Parks; the search itself is the TreeKeeper site the division links from that page. Your tree's species is a matter of record, which matters because the species decides whether Situation 2 applies.

The trimming grid. The division publishes tree trimming grid maps by council district, currently for fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26 alongside the 2023-24 set. If the question is when the city will next come to your block, that is where the answer is posted.

The removal notices. Tree removals the city determines to be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act get a Notice of Exemption, filed with the County Clerk and posted on StreetsLA's CEQA page. We counted the table: sixteen notices, the two most recent both filed September 9, 2026, for single addresses — 1556 W Altivo Way and 447 S 26th Street — alongside project-scale entries like the 22255 West Mulholland Drive Protected Tree Removal Project from May. Check the dates on the page rather than its header: the page's own "Page updated" line still reads June 9, 2026, while the rows beneath it run to September.

Outside the city line, a different rulebook

Everything above is the City of Los Angeles. An address in unincorporated county territory — anywhere in the county that sits inside no city — is governed instead by the county's Oak Tree Permit Ordinance, Chapter 22.174 of the county zoning code, which LA County Planning describes as establishing the permitting and review processes for developments that will impact oak trees in the unincorporated areas. It is narrower than the city's ordinance in one obvious way: it is about oaks.

It is also being rewritten. The department says it is updating the ordinance to streamline permitting, encourage the planting of new oaks and further encourage redesign to preserve existing ones; that the public outreach meetings are finished; and that a public draft is planned for 2026 without a specific date yet. If you own oaks in unincorporated territory, the newsletter sign-up on that page is the cheapest way to hear about it, and oaktree@planning.lacounty.gov is the department's address for the program. Neither rulebook is yours if you live in one of the county's other incorporated cities; start with that city's own code.

What to do, in this order

First, find the trunk. Not the canopy, not the roots — the trunk. Between the curb and the sidewalk, or anywhere else in the street, puts you in Situation 1 no matter how far the branches reach over your roof. Wholly on your lot puts you in Situation 2 or 3.

If it is on your lot, measure it at four and a half feet. Add the trunks and stems together. Under four inches of cumulative diameter, the protected ordinance does not reach it whatever the species. At or over four inches, identify the species against the photographic guide before you do anything else.

Look the tree up in the inventory if it is a street tree. The species and the site are already recorded, and quoting them speeds up every conversation that follows.

Apply for the free permit first. If the job is planting or root pruning, both permits are no-fee, so the application is the entire cost of asking.

If the job is removal, write down which of the six circumstances is yours before you open the application. Sidewalk, sewer, water or gas line, driveway apron, new or relocated driveway, or construction that requires it. If none of the six fits, expect a denial and read it as an instruction to re-design, because that is how the division has said it decides.

If a contractor tells you no permit is needed, ask which permit they are working under. The enforcement actions in this story attach to the property and the permittee, not to the crew that drove away.

And if the tree is down, or coming down, on a street: MyLA311, category tree emergency, before anything on this list.