Do I need a permit to remove a tree on my own land in Huntsville?

Chapter 27 makes trees on private land the property and responsibility of the owner, and its removal permit covers trees of six inches d.b.h. or more on public land.

Who owns the tree in the right-of-way outside my house?

Section 27-32 says interest in and responsibility for trees on the rights-of-way of improved city-maintained streets is shared by the city and the adjoining landowner.

What does a city tree removal permit cost?

Nothing. The code has the city forester issue public-land removal permits by telephone at no cost, under guidelines set by the tree commission.

What is the penalty for damaging a public tree?

A misdemeanor, with a fine sufficient to restore the damage and capped at $500.00 per tree or shrub, plus possible restitution in goods or labor.

How high can a hedge be on a corner lot?

No higher than 30 inches above the level of the adjacent intersection inside the 30-foot visibility triangle, with an exception for high-crowned small trees.

Huntsville Tree Permits & Ownership | What the Ordinance Says

By the Huntsville Tree Care Guide · Published and fact-checked October 4, 2026 · Independent local guide

Short answer first. A tree standing wholly inside your own boundary is yours, and the city's removal permit does not reach it. That permit covers trees on public land, and the strip of ground between the sidewalk and the street belongs, in the code's own word, to both of you.

What the ordinance actually governs

Huntsville's tree rules sit in Chapter 27, Vegetation, Article II of the Code of Ordinances. The article was rewritten in its entirety by Ordinance No. 04-45 on February 12, 2004, and the published code carries a banner saying it is codified through Ordinance No. 26-196, adopted March 12, 2026, as Supplement 30.

Section 27-31 gives the purpose in three parts: recognized standards of tree planting and maintenance on public and easement-laden lands, protection of trees and shrubs on those lands from willful or negligent harm, and active continuing programs for public education about trees and their management. Read the list again and notice what is absent from it. Ordinary private ground is not the subject of the article.

Section 27-52 states that outright. Trees located on private land are the property and responsibility of the owner of such land. The same section explains why the city takes an interest anyway, citing usefulness and value in energy conservation, in moderating extremes of temperature and humidity, in reducing noise, glare and air pollution, in reducing soil erosion, and in improving the city's aesthetic character. The measures it then authorizes are information and a technical referral service, not a permit counter.

One carve-out is worth naming before you assume nothing applies. Section 27-53(a)(5) sends all parking lot landscaping to Appendix A, the zoning ordinance, so a commercial site or a new development answers to landscape requirements that a back garden never meets.

The right-of-way tree belongs to both of you

Section 27-32 holds the sentence almost nobody here has read. Interest in, and responsibility for, trees on the rights-of-way of improved public streets and highways maintained by the city is shared by the city and the owner of the adjoining land, in the absence of other specific provisions to the contrary. Shared is the operative word, and it cuts both ways.

The section then splits into two cases. A tree the city planted for ornamentation or public safety inside those rights-of-way may not be removed or intentionally damaged except by a duly authorized person who has first secured a permit from the city forester. A tree already standing there which the adjacent owner maintains for ornamentation, shade or screening may continue to be maintained that way, so long as that part of the right-of-way is not improved for travel or utility purposes and the maintenance is not inconsistent with health, safety and welfare.

You are also owed notice. The city will not remove such a tree without notice to the adjoining owner, with one exception: where that notice would impede its protection of the safe movement of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, or the safe operation and maintenance of the street, the public utilities or the drainage facilities inside the right-of-way. A removal for any other purpose has to be preceded by reasonable notice and by a finding from the city forester that it accords with adopted standards.

The permit that exists, and the one that does not

Section 27-51(d)(1) is the whole permit rule. Any person or agency, private or public, needing to remove a tree six inches or more in d.b.h. from public land shall first obtain by telephone a removal permit from the city forester. One permit may cover a single tree or a group of them, and it is issued at no cost under guidelines established by the tree commission.

It arrives with a duty attached. Under 27-51(d)(2), anyone removing permitted trees of six inches d.b.h. or more has to provide for planting new trees in approximately equal numbers, at locations mutually agreed between the forester and the permit holder. Avoiding the paperwork does not avoid the duty, because the code adds that failure to obtain a permit when one would be required shall not relieve responsibility for replacement.

The city's own writing on going out on a limb for public safety gives the practical route: anyone who wants the city to remove a tree in the public right-of-way goes through the arborist's office to acquire a tree removal permit. The Urban Forestry and Horticulture division, which administers the ordinance, lists arborist Marc Byers on (256) 427-7499, with the Landscape Management office on 256-564-8030 at 3242 Leeman Ferry Rd. SW, open Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A hazardous tree, and who gets the bill

Section 27-51(b) covers the case everyone eventually meets. When an officer or agent of the city learns that a tree on a parcel adjoining public or easement-laden land is, or is likely to become, a threat to public safety, the city may give notice to the owner with a fixed period to remedy the condition, or it may abate the hazard forthwith by taking the appropriate and necessary action under adopted standards.

Then the money. Where the tree is deemed wholly on private property and the owner has failed to abate the hazard, the cost of the city's abating it is assessed against the property owner. Where the tree is partly on private and partly on public property, the cost is borne by both, assessed and prorated based on the proportion of the stump diameter of the tree located on private and public property. A stump measurement decides the split, which is an unusually concrete test to find in an ordinance.

The duty runs in your direction too. The same section says that when the owner of a parcel adjoining public or easement-laden land becomes aware that a tree he maintains is, or is likely to become, a threat to public safety, it is his duty to abate that hazard by appropriate action under the adopted standards. Knowing about a leaning tree over a sidewalk is therefore not a neutral position.

Easements deserve a line of their own, because they are widely misread. The code defines easement-laden land as privately owned land over which an easement has been granted for public services, and says an easement is only a right of use whose grant does not transfer ownership rights. Section 27-52(b) follows through: trees on easement-laden land are the property and responsibility of the landowner, and the city accepts no responsibility for managing them beyond what its lawful activities there require.

What counts as harming a public tree

Section 27-34 lists the offenses, and several of them are things a well-meaning homeowner does without thinking. On public or easement-laden land it is unlawful for an unauthorized person to break, injure, mutilate, burn, kill, remove or destroy a tree or shrub; to excavate a tunnel, ditch or trench, or lay a driveway, pavement or sidewalk through or across the root zone, except under adopted standards; to attach a wire, rope, cable, poster, sign, nail or other fastener to it; or to place stone, brick, sand, earth or other material so as to impede water, air and fertilizer reaching the roots.

The list continues with knowingly permitting a gas leak within the root zone, allowing a toxic chemical to drain on or about the tree, knowingly permitting a current-carrying wire to be attached outside adopted standards, moving a building or other large object along a street so as to damage a protected tree, building a structure, pavement or utility without proper consideration of the trees, and unreasonably preventing or delaying the tree commission or its agents in their work.

Enforcement in section 27-35 moves on a clock. A city department or Huntsville Utilities asks the city forester to inspect the problem jointly with that department's representative; if a violation is believed to exist, the forester refers the matter to the property owner for redress at the owner's expense within 14 calendar days, and if it is not corrected in that window all the information goes to the appropriate enforcement authority.

Section 27-36 sets the price. A violation is a misdemeanor, and on conviction the fine is a sum sufficient to restore the damage, not to exceed $500.00 per tree or shrub damaged, with restitution in goods or labor possible on top and any combination of those penalties available to the court. Appeals of arbitration, decisions or other actions by the tree commission go first to the city council and then to the proper court of law.

The measurements the ordinance argues in

Three definitions in section 27-33 decide most arguments, so it pays to use the same ones as the city. D.b.h. means diameter breast height, derived by measuring the trunk circumference four and a half feet above ground on the uphill side of the tree and dividing by 3.14; for a multi-stemmed tree you add the separate circumferences at that height and divide the sum by 3.14. Caliper is trunk diameter taken six inches above ground for trees up to a four-inch caliper and 12 inches above ground for larger ones.

The third is the one that saves trees. Critical rooting distance is the radius around the base taking in the root plate and the transport roots attached to it, within which soil disturbance is likely to affect the tree's overall health and root damage is likely to introduce disease-causing organisms. The code puts that radius, in feet, at roughly 2.5 times the d.b.h. in inches, so a trunk measuring 20 inches through gives a working radius of about 50 feet.

The code also explains why the root plate matters more than the canopy. Its structural roots are constantly subjected to compression and tension during windy conditions, and damage to them with the decay that follows commonly leads to catastrophic failure, especially in wind. A trench cut inside that radius years ago is part of the current risk picture, which is the ground covered on the risk and health page.

Sight lines: the rule that catches hedges and low limbs

A separate chapter catches vegetation that blocks a junction, and it is enforced by the city engineer rather than the forester. Chapter 25, Article IX of the code sets out the visual obstruction rules, with written notification first and a citation to municipal court if the obstruction is not removed or abated within 14 days.

Section 25-462 makes it a misdemeanor to maintain any sign, hedge, fence, shrubbery, natural growth or other obstruction to the view, movable or stationary, higher than 30 inches above the level of the adjacent intersection, inside the triangular area between the property line and a diagonal line joining points 30 feet from where the property lines meet. Rounded corners use the property lines extended. The same geometry applies where a public street right-of-way meets a railroad right-of-way.

Driveways get their own, smaller triangle. Section 25-463 applies the identical 30-inch limit where a private drive enters a street, inside the triangle formed by the street property line, the private drive-edge line and a line joining them ten feet from their intersection. Section 25-466 adds that an obstruction is not excused merely for having been there before the article was adopted.

There is a sensible exception for trees. Section 25-465 lifts both triangles for small trees not more than 12 inches in diameter, trimmed to the trunk, standing at least 15 feet above the level of the intersection and planted so as to leave a clear and unobstructed crossview. In practice that is a specification for a corner tree: keep the trunk clean and the crown high.

Who you are actually dealing with

Behind the forester sits the Tree Commission, created under Chapter 2, Article VIII, Division 8. It carries eight voting members plus non-voting ex officio members: one utility employee with knowledge of both engineering and tree maintenance problems, one professional forester, botanist or horticulturist employed by a government agency or an educational institution and licensed as the state requires, two professional members such as licensed tree service operators or licensed landscape architects, and four at-large members drawn from diverse parts of the city. Terms run two years and members serve without pay.

Its duties are worth knowing before you escalate anything. The commission composes and annually reviews a city tree plan, acts as the board of appeals reviewing contested decisions and actions of the forestry horticulture supervisor, plans an annual Arbor Week observance, and monitors the licensure of tree service companies practicing in the city while initiating enforcement under Chapter 27, Article II. Each July it presents a city tree plan to the mayor's office, which on approval becomes the official comprehensive plan for managing the city's tree population.

That licensure duty is worth converting into a question on your own job. The state's professional services program carries Tree Surgery as category TS under its Horticulture license, at $175.00 a year on a term running October 1 to September 30, so a current license is a date you can read. The debris guide sets out what else that license covers.

The standards your contractor is measured against

The code does not leave quality to opinion. Section 27-33 adopts the American National Standards Institute A300 standard for tree, shrub and other woody plant maintenance, part 1, standard pruning practices, together with ANSI Z133.1, the safety requirements for arboricultural operations, both as they may be amended. Section 27-54 requires pruning on city property, or by city employees, to follow them.

The city applies them with method. Its blog describes the arborist's group working through up to four levels of evaluation recommended by ANSI to weigh both the risk of a tree failing and the consequences if it does, and notes that roughly 90 percent of its time goes on storm cleanup, trimming, protecting and planting rather than on removal. Those are the same standards a private contractor can be asked about, and asking which A300 practice a proposed cut follows is a reasonable question in a quote conversation.

Construction is where mature trees quietly die

Section 27-57 applies to construction done by or for the city on public or easement-laden land, and it is the best free checklist in the code. Plans must include a tree management plan developed by or with the city forester, identifying trees whose species, condition and location justify preservation and giving instructions that prevent mechanical damage to trunks and branches, keep construction activity of all types out of the root-plate area, and evaluate grade cuts and fills, paving, materials storage, traffic and parking, fires, attachment of signs, fences and utility boxes, dumping of toxic materials and the washing of equipment inside the critical rooting distance.

It also asks for landscaping recommendations at the interfaces between construction areas and tree-save zones, an education element for work crews and their supervisors, and provision for removing trees that cannot or should not be preserved. A private driveway pour is not bound by any of that, but the biology is identical, and a tree lost to a trench two summers ago is a removal you are paying for now.

Planting on the right-of-way, with the city's help

Section 27-53(b) authorizes a greenspace planting agreement, and it is a genuinely useful thing to know exists. Under it the city forestry division provides one or more trees of mutually acceptable species, helps choose the location, supplies information on planting and maintenance, and returns to give initial horticultural pruning roughly a year after planting. The owner agrees to plant them as arranged, to use reasonable care including periodic watering and mulching, to keep mowing equipment away from them, and to report tree problems affecting the adjacent right-of-way.

Read the small print before signing. The agreement runs for ten years from the date signed, is personal between the parties and does not run with the land, and the trees planted under it are the property and responsibility of the property owner. It limits neither the city's authority to abate a danger nor Huntsville Utilities' authority to prune under Article II, which is the territory of the power line page.

How to report a tree, and what to say

For a tree on public ground the reporting channel is Huntsville Connect, the city's non-emergency service request system, which runs on SeeClickFix software. A report takes a category from the drop-down, a confirmed location on the map, a photograph where you can manage one and a written description, and it can be filed under your name, with your identity hidden, or as a guest. The city lists 256-535-2489 on that page, and the arborist's article points residents to the same app for trees they suspect are a public safety problem.

Write the description the way the forester will read it. Give the species if you know it, the trunk size at chest height, what the tree stands over, and what has changed recently, because a report that says a tree looks dangerous starts a conversation while a report that says a 24-inch water oak has fresh soil mounding on the uphill side starts an inspection.

The state frame around all of it

Alabama's urban forestry program sits above the city's. The Forestry Commission's Urban and Community Forestry Program promotes the development, care and protection of an estimated one-quarter billion trees in the state growing where people live, work and play, supports Arbor Day events, provides access to urban forestry and green infrastructure grants, and coordinates the Arbor Day Foundation recognition programs inside Alabama.

Those recognition programs explain the shape of the local code. The commission's Tree City USA page lists four minimum standards for a community: a tree board or department, a tree care ordinance, a community forestry program with an annual budget of at least two dollars per capita, and an Arbor Day observance, proclamation and tree planting ceremony. The program began in 1976, and Mobile was the first Alabama community to earn the designation, in 1979. Set the four standards beside Huntsville's own code and the tree board, the ordinance and the Arbor Week duty are all there in writing.

What to actually do

Settle the boundary first, because every other answer depends on it. A tree inside your line is yours to decide about, and nothing in Chapter 27 requires a permit for it; a tree in the right-of-way is shared, and a call to the arborist's office belongs before a quote rather than after one. If you are unsure where the line runs, a survey beats an assumption that gets expensive.

Then take the three rules that still apply to your own tree: the sight-line triangle at the corner, the critical rooting distance before anyone digs, and the disposal route, which the debris guide works through jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Keep the planning ranges for what they are, a budgeting illustration rather than a quote, and ask which of these rules the contractor expects to handle.

If the question is whether the tree deserves keeping at all, the species guide covers what the code itself says about the trees that cause the most trouble here.

Official sources

All pages read October 4, 2026. Ordinances are amended and contact details change, so confirm with the issuing office before relying on anything here.

Tree permits and ownership in Huntsville