Trees in Bentonville now have rights. 

The city already required a minimum number of trees in new developments. What’s new is that Bentonville now protects existing trees during construction — and penalizes their removal.

The new tree protections were passed April 14 as part of a sweeping overhaul of the city’s development code intended to guide how the city grows in the coming decades.

Studies have found that Bentonville has been losing trees in recent years, despite the city offering hundreds of free trees at giveaways twice a year.

In 2013, about 25% of land in the city was covered by trees. By 2024, that dropped to 21%, largely due to rapid development, although the Memorial Day storms two years ago played a role in the decrease, too.

The new development code says trees are important to preventing stormwater runoff, reducing urban heat and providing shade.

Additionally, Planning Director Tyler Overstreet said that trees and other greenery are “an important part of what people really appreciate about Bentonville and about Arkansas as The Natural State.”

The previous code required new developments to have a certain number of trees per lot. Those rules were updated to match new zoning districts.

R-1 (low-density, single-family residential), T3 (Neighborhood Edge) and T3.2 (Neighborhood Transition) require two trees for every 50 feet of street frontage, with a minimum of 2 trees.

Generally speaking, for higher-density districts, the requirement is one tree for every 50 or 60 feet of landscaped street frontage.

Stricter rules exist for projects in General Commercial, Light Industrial, and Large Format Industrial zones.

The code now includes tree removal rules protecting "significant” trees — those that meet a minimum diameter threshold or are identified as endangered or threatened species.

For larger-growing species, such as oaks and maples, the threshold for tree preservation is 8 inches or more in diameter. For smaller species, like dogwoods and redbuds, the minimum diameter is 4 inches. Diameter measurements are taken 4.5 feet above the ground level.

Before development can begin, a Tree Preservation Plan must be submitted outlining which trees will be removed or preserved, how trees will be protected during construction, and each tree’s location, size and species.

The rules require a tree protection zone that is 1 foot of radius for every inch of trunk diameter. For example, a tree with a 10-inch diameter would require a 10-foot radius protection zone.  

In the event the replacement trees cannot be put on the site, a developer could negotiate with the city to plant them on another property or pay a fee for the city to do so.

The tree removal rules generally don’t apply to individual single-family or duplexes on existing lots unless they’re part of a new subdivision.

The code also creates a kind of exchange rate between required trees and preserved significant trees.

If a significant tree is removed, the developer must plant replacement trees. The number required scales up with the size of the removed tree, starting at 2 replacements for a tree 4 inches in diameter up to 10 for one 30 inches or more.

There is no penalty for removing “significant” trees that pose a public safety risk, are on a prohibited species list, or are dead, dying or fatally diseased, as documented by a certified arborist.

In the inverse, developers can reduce their tree minimum requirements by preserving  significant trees. 

By preserving one 30+ diameter tree, a developer could theoretically reduce their total tree requirement by 10 trees, depending on the size of the parcel.

“The idea being if someone has a significant oak on site, and they can kind of design around it, it makes sense to offer some kind of incentive for them to do so,” Overstreet said.