Who Owns the Tree by the Curb

Every so often somebody calls about a tree that turns out not to be theirs. It is dropping limbs, it is dead on one side, it is lifting the sidewalk, and it is standing in the strip between the sidewalk and the curb. That strip is public right-of-way, and the tree in it belongs to the city regardless of who has been raking under it for fifteen years.

What the city does

Winston-Salem’s Urban Forestry program cares for trees on city property and enforces the tree ordinances. Its crews plant and maintain trees along rights-of-way and in parks, and between them they manage more than 100,000 trees on public land. The city is explicit that it plants and maintains on city property and rights of way only, and that trees on private property are the owner’s responsibility.

That is a large operation, and it produces a canopy worth having. City figures put the tree canopy at 47.28 percent averaged across the eight wards, against a recommended density of 40 percent for cities in the eastern United States and a national average of 27.1 percent. Winston-Salem has held Tree City USA status for close to twenty-five years and was named Tree City of the Year for North Carolina in 2017.

What it means for you

A private tree crew does not work on a right-of-way tree at a homeowner’s request. If a street tree needs attention, the route is the city rather than a tree company, and a company that offers to take one down anyway is offering you a problem.

The practical difficulty is that the right-of-way boundary is not always obvious and is not the same on every street. It is usually wider than people assume, extending some distance behind the sidewalk, and where a tree sits close to the line the question of whose it is has to be settled before anybody quotes.

The reverse case

The other version of this call is a homeowner who assumes a tree is the city’s because it is near the front, and finds out it is theirs. That is more common than the first version, and the giveaway is usually that it sits behind the sidewalk rather than between the sidewalk and the curb.

Where a tree is on your own lot, no city permit is needed to remove it. The tree preservation requirements in the Unified Development Ordinance attach to development projects that require a land disturbing permit, not to a homeowner clearing a back yard. The tree rules guide works through the whole picture.

And the brush

One more thing worth knowing before a crew turns up. The city collects residential brush, with limbs no larger than six inches wide and six feet long, stacked at the curb with the cut ends facing the same direction. It does not collect brush cut by contractors or commercial services. Whatever a crew cuts leaves with the crew, and that haul-away belongs on the written quote.