Salt Lake City Landscape Architect
Salt Lake City Landscape Architecture for Land Developers, Civil Engineers, and Architects
Evergreen Design Group is a licensed Salt Lake City landscape architect firm serving land developers, civil engineers, architects, and design-build contractors on projects throughout Salt Lake County and the broader Wasatch Front. Founded in 2005 and licensed in Utah, we deliver land planning, planting design, hardscape design, and irrigation design on residential communities, mixed-use developments, commercial projects, and industrial sites across the Salt Lake City metro.
We work exclusively with project teams — not homeowners. Our practice is built around B2B project delivery: coordinating with civil engineers and project managers, meeting Salt Lake City’s plan review and permit submittal schedules, navigating Salt Lake County’s regulatory environment, and producing construction-ready documents that move your project forward without resubmission cycles.
Salt Lake City’s development environment combines some of the fastest urban growth in the Mountain West with a regulatory framework that is more technically demanding than most comparable markets. Water-wise landscaping ordinances, secondary water system requirements, Urban Forestry tree preservation standards, lakebed soil conditions, and the overlay district design review process administered by Salt Lake City Planning make this a market that rewards deep local knowledge in a landscape architect.
What Salt Lake City Developers Need to Know: Local Regulatory Requirements
Water-Wise Ordinance and SLC Public Utilities
Salt Lake City has adopted one of the more comprehensive water-wise landscaping ordinances in Utah, administered through Salt Lake City Public Utilities. The ordinance restricts the percentage of a site's landscaped area that can be covered by traditional turf, requires drought-tolerant plant palettes for a specified proportion of planted beds, and mandates drip irrigation rather than spray irrigation in shrub and groundcover planting areas. These requirements apply to new development and significant redevelopment projects and are reviewed during the plan check process.
A Salt Lake City landscape architect must design planting and irrigation plans that document turf area calculations, drought-tolerant planting ratios, and irrigation system type by zone — not simply provide a plant list and layout. Plans that do not address water-wise compliance requirements explicitly are flagged during Salt Lake City's plan review and require correction before permit issuance. Our team produces water-wise compliance documentation as a standard component of every Salt Lake City project deliverable.
Secondary Water Systems and Irrigation Requirements
Most developed areas of Salt Lake County are served by secondary water systems — untreated irrigation water delivered through a separate municipal distribution infrastructure distinct from culinary (drinking) water. Secondary water is significantly less expensive per unit than culinary water and has historically been the default for landscape irrigation across the Wasatch Front. Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District operates the primary secondary water distribution infrastructure serving much of Salt Lake County's developed and developing areas.
Secondary water system design requires a Salt Lake City landscape architect to understand point-of-connection characteristics specific to the serving district, metering compliance requirements under Utah's 2022 water conservation legislation, and the distinct pressure parameters of secondary vs. culinary water supply. Our irrigation designers produce secondary water system documentation — including metering specifications, backflow prevention details, and hydraulic sizing tied to Jordan Valley pressure data — as a standard deliverable on Salt Lake County projects.
Urban Forestry and Tree Preservation Requirements
Salt Lake City's Urban Forestry program administers tree preservation and street tree requirements that affect new development, redevelopment, and public right-of-way improvements within the city. Street tree requirements specify approved species, minimum caliper at installation, tree grate and structural soil specifications for urban planting environments, and spacing standards by street classification. On development projects involving tree removal, Salt Lake City may require tree surveys, protection plans, and replacement documentation depending on the project scope and location.
For infill and mixed-use projects in Salt Lake City's older neighborhoods — where mature trees are frequently present on small urban lots — tree preservation strategy can meaningfully affect grading design, utility routing, and project timeline. Engaging a Salt Lake City landscape architect early in the design process allows tree preservation options to be evaluated before grading limits are set and protection zones to be established in coordination with the civil plan.
Lakebed Soils, Karst Conditions, and Seismic Risk
Salt Lake City and the surrounding valley floor sit atop ancient Lake Bonneville lakebed sediments — fine-grained lacustrine soils that are often highly compressible, subject to differential settlement, and in many areas classified as liquefaction-susceptible under seismic loading. The Wasatch Fault runs directly along the eastern front of the Salt Lake Valley, making seismic risk a real design parameter for site planning and hardscape design in this market.
From a landscape architecture standpoint, lakebed soils have low permeability — infiltration-based stormwater management strategies that perform well in other markets often underperform in the Salt Lake Valley without specific engineering. Heavy clay lakebed profiles also exhibit significant shrink-swell behavior that affects hardscape joint design, subbase specification, and long-term planting establishment. Our construction documents for Salt Lake City projects are specified for these conditions explicitly, in coordination with geotechnical findings from the project civil team.
Overlay Districts and Design Review
Salt Lake City Community Planning and Development administers a network of overlay zoning districts — including Historic Districts, Gateway Districts, Corridor Overlay Districts, and Form-Based Code areas — that impose additional design standards on development projects within their boundaries. These overlays affect landscape setbacks, streetscape standards, hardscape material selection, and in some cases the planting palette and tree species permissible on street frontages and public-facing areas.
Projects in Salt Lake City's Central Business District, Sugar House neighborhood, 9th and 9th area, East Liberty Park corridor, and other established commercial and mixed-use zones frequently require Planning Commission design review as a condition of approval. A Salt Lake City landscape architect familiar with these overlay requirements can anticipate design review criteria and produce submittals that satisfy reviewing bodies without correction cycles. Our team maintains current working knowledge of Salt Lake City's overlay district standards.
Landscape Architecture Services We Deliver in Salt Lake City
Every service is performed in-house by our licensed professionals.
Land planning is the highest-leverage phase for a Salt Lake City landscape architect to engage on a development project. Our land planners work with developers and civil engineers at the pre-application and schematic design stage to establish open space frameworks, buffer configurations, water-wise landscaping areas, amenity siting, and land use relationships that satisfy Salt Lake City zoning requirements and overlay district standards — before the civil plan is locked.
In Salt Lake City’s urban infill and mixed-use development environment, land planning decisions made early determine whether a project satisfies open space requirements, tree preservation obligations, water-wise compliance thresholds, and streetscape standards as designed — or requires costly redesign to meet them during entitlement. We engage at the planning phase to resolve these constraints before they become plan review corrections.
Planting design in Salt Lake City requires species selection calibrated to the Wasatch Front’s alkaline lakebed soils, cold winters with significant temperature swings, hot and dry summers with intense UV exposure, and Salt Lake City’s water-wise ordinance compliance requirements including turf area restrictions and drought-tolerant planting ratios. A plant palette appropriate for a Salt Lake City urban infill project differs from what works at a suburban residential community in South Jordan or Herriman — microclimate, soil depth, water service type, and municipal code all vary.
Our planting plans are documented to the level required for Salt Lake City plan review, contractor bidding, and installation: species (common and botanical names), container sizes, spacing, water use classification per SLC Public Utilities water-wise requirements, turf area calculations, soil amendment notes for alkaline lakebed conditions, and installation specifications. For projects subject to Urban Forestry review, we include street tree specifications in the approved species list and structural soil details for constrained urban planting environments.
Tree preservation requirements are active on infill, redevelopment, and new development projects across Salt Lake City — particularly in established neighborhoods where mature cottonwood, American elm, Norway maple, and ornamental street trees are present on urban lots. Our tree disposition plans document existing trees by species, caliper, and condition; establish tree protection zones per Salt Lake City Urban Forestry requirements; assess preservation feasibility relative to proposed grading and utility layouts; and calculate any replacement obligations in the format required for City plan review submittal.
Salt Lake City’s residential development market — particularly in the city’s growing mixed-use and transit-oriented corridors, and in the high-growth suburban communities surrounding the city — is competitive on amenity quality. We design amenity packages for pools, clubhouses, fitness stations, pickleball courts, dog parks, pocket parks, and trail connections that are market-responsive, code-compliant, and built around the HOA operational realities of Utah’s development environment.
Water efficiency expectations are integrated into every Salt Lake City amenity design. Pool deck drainage, irrigation-efficient planting buffers, and turf area management within HOA common areas are designed to SLC Public Utilities water-wise standards from project initiation — not added as an afterthought during plan review.
Hardscape design in Salt Lake City is shaped by conditions that require explicit engineering attention: freeze-thaw cycling at 4,300-foot elevation causes pavement failure in poorly detailed pavements; expansive lakebed clay soils cause surface movement without appropriate subbase preparation; high UV exposure at altitude degrades inferior sealers and materials faster than lower-elevation markets; and the arid environment demands that water-shedding surface drainage be a primary design consideration rather than a secondary one.
Our Salt Lake City hardscape construction documents include materials specifications appropriate to Wasatch Front climate conditions, subbase and drainage details calibrated to lakebed clay soil behavior, expansion joint design for freeze-thaw movement, grading and drainage coordination with the civil plan, and structural pavement sections for vehicle and pedestrian loading. For urban infill and streetscape projects in Salt Lake City’s overlay districts, we produce hardscape designs that satisfy both engineering requirements and Planning Commission design review standards.
Irrigation design is one of the most technically regulated landscape architecture deliverables on a Salt Lake City development project. Water-wise compliance, secondary water system design, Jordan Valley metering requirements, and Salt Lake City Public Utilities backflow prevention standards all intersect in the irrigation plan — making this a document that carries both regulatory and operational consequences.
Our Salt Lake City irrigation designs include: a hydraulic water demand analysis; culinary or secondary water point-of-connection sizing with metering compliance documentation; zone layouts organized by plant type, water use classification, and sun/shade exposure; smart controller and weather-sensor specifications; drip irrigation details for planting beds per SLC water-wise requirements; and backflow prevention documentation compliant with Jordan Valley and SLC Public Utilities standards. All designs are documented for competitive contractor bidding, water district review, and long-term HOA or property management.
Salt Lake City Project Types We Support
Evergreen Design Group supports the full spectrum of residential, commercial, mixed-use, and industrial development in Salt Lake City and across Salt Lake County. Our B2B practice integrates directly into your project delivery team.
Residential Land Development
Master-planned communities, single-family subdivisions, townhome communities, mixed-density neighborhoods, and age-restricted communities across Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County — including the high-growth southwest quadrant markets of South Jordan, Herriman, Riverton, and Saratoga Springs. We coordinate with your civil engineer from land planning through final construction documents, managing full landscape scope across all project phases including phased community build-out.
Mixed-Use and Urban Infill
Salt Lake City’s urban core and inner-ring neighborhoods are active markets for mixed-use and transit-oriented development along the TRAX and FrontRunner corridors. These projects require a Salt Lake City landscape architect experienced in constrained urban sites, structural soil systems, water-wise compliance in dense environments, streetscape standards, and Planning Commission design review in overlay districts. Our team is familiar with Salt Lake City Planning’s design review expectations and produces submittals calibrated to clear review without correction cycles.
Commercial Development
Retail centers, office and tech campuses, medical office developments, and institutional projects across Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County. We produce landscape plans that satisfy Salt Lake City’s landscape ordinance, water-wise requirements, and applicable overlay district design standards — and function in the high-use commercial environment of the Wasatch Front.
Industrial and Distribution
Distribution centers, manufacturing facilities, and logistics properties across Salt Lake County’s industrial corridors along I-15, I-80, and I-215. We produce landscape plans designed for large impervious footprints, heavy vehicle circulation, and low-maintenance management — that satisfy site plan approval requirements and applicable water-wise standards.
Why Salt Lake City Project Teams Work with Evergreen Design Group
Licensed in Utah, Fluent in SLC's Regulatory Environment
Evergreen Design Group holds an active Utah landscape architect license. Every Salt Lake City project we produce is managed by or under the direct supervision of a licensed landscape architect. Founded in 2005, we have delivered projects across more than 40 states — and the Wasatch Front is one of our most technically demanding and active markets. We maintain current working knowledge of Salt Lake City's water-wise ordinance, Urban Forestry standards, overlay district requirements, and secondary water system design — the four areas where plan review corrections most commonly occur on SLC development projects.
Your Salt Lake City Landscape Architect Covers the Full Wasatch Front
Salt Lake City is the hub, but development activity extends across Salt Lake County and into adjacent Davis and Utah counties. We serve projects in South Jordan, Herriman, West Valley City, Murray, Millcreek, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights, and the growing southwest corridor — maintaining jurisdiction-specific knowledge of each municipality's landscape and water-wise requirements rather than applying a single Salt Lake City template across the county.
Single-Source Landscape Scope Management
Land planning, planting design, hardscape design, tree disposition plans, irrigation design, and community amenities design — managed by one firm, coordinated internally, and delivered as a unified construction document set. That reduces coordination burden on your civil engineer and project manager, eliminates scope gaps between consultants, and produces a cleaner package going into Salt Lake City plan review.
Construction-Ready Documentation
Our deliverables are produced to the standard that licensed contractors can price and build from without excessive RFIs. In Salt Lake City's development environment — where plan review timelines are real schedule constraints and construction windows are compressed by Wasatch Front winters — documentation quality directly affects project velocity.
Frequently Asked Questions — Salt Lake City Landscape Architect
Evergreen Design Group serves projects throughout Salt Lake County and across the broader Wasatch Front — including Salt Lake City, South Jordan, Herriman, Riverton, West Valley City, Murray, Millcreek, Taylorsville, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights, and Saratoga Springs. Each municipality administers its own landscape and water-wise ordinance requirements, and we produce documents calibrated to the applicable jurisdiction. We are also active in Davis County (Layton, Bountiful, Kaysville) and Utah County (Lehi, American Fork, Provo, Orem) — serving the full Wasatch Front development market.
Salt Lake City’s water-wise ordinance, administered by SLC Public Utilities, restricts the percentage of a site’s landscaped area that can be covered by conventional turf, requires drought-tolerant plantings in a specified proportion of planted beds, and mandates drip irrigation rather than spray irrigation in shrub and groundcover areas. Compliance documentation — including turf area calculations and irrigation zone type by area — is reviewed during Salt Lake City’s plan check process. Our landscape architects produce water-wise compliance documentation as a standard component of every Salt Lake City project planting and irrigation plan.
Most of Salt Lake County’s developed and developing areas are served by Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District’s secondary water system — untreated non-potable water for landscape irrigation at significantly lower cost than culinary water. Irrigation systems designed for secondary water must be sized to Jordan Valley’s pressure parameters, include appropriate metering specifications to comply with Utah’s 2022 water conservation legislation, and use backflow prevention devices approved for non-potable water service. Our irrigation designers produce secondary water system documentation calibrated to Jordan Valley’s requirements as a standard practice on Salt Lake County projects.
Salt Lake City’s Urban Forestry program reviews landscape plans for compliance with street tree requirements and, on projects involving tree removal on developed urban lots, may require tree surveys, protection zone plans, and replacement documentation. Requirements vary by project scope and location. In Salt Lake City’s established neighborhoods — where mature trees are common on small urban lots — tree preservation strategy can affect grading design, utility routing, and project schedule. We advise on tree preservation options at the land planning phase, before grading limits are set.
Salt Lake City’s overlay districts — including Historic Districts, the Gateway District, Corridor Overlay Districts, and Form-Based Code areas — impose design standards that affect landscape setbacks, streetscape materials, tree species and caliper at installation, and in some cases planting palette. Projects in overlay districts often require Planning Commission design review as a condition of site plan approval. A Salt Lake City landscape architect familiar with these standards can produce submittals calibrated to Planning Commission expectations — reducing correction cycles and entitlement delays. Our team maintains current working knowledge of Salt Lake City’s overlay district landscape requirements.
As early as the land planning and pre-application phase — before the civil plan is set. In Salt Lake City’s regulatory environment, engaging a landscape architect at the site layout stage allows water-wise compliance thresholds, tree preservation zones, open space obligations, and overlay district setbacks to be integrated into the site design rather than retrofitted after grading limits and utility layouts are established. Projects that include a Salt Lake City landscape architect at the planning phase consistently produce cleaner submittals and fewer plan review corrections than projects where landscape architecture is added as a late-stage deliverable.
Our construction document deliverables are produced in AutoCAD (.dwg), compatible with the file exchange standards used by civil engineering firms on Wasatch Front development projects. We coordinate on project-specific CAD standards, layer naming, and sheet format requirements at project initiation. PDF plan sets are provided for Salt Lake City permit submittal to Planning, Public Utilities, and Urban Forestry. For BIM-integrated workflows, file delivery options can be discussed at the proposal stage.
Contact Evergreen Design Group through our website or call our office directly. We will schedule a brief discovery conversation to understand your project type, site location, scope, and schedule, then follow up with a written proposal. Most clients are land developers, civil engineering firms, architects of record, or design-build contractors. We are structured to engage directly within your project delivery process and move at the pace of Salt Lake City’s active development market.
Ready to Start Your Salt Lake City Project?
Whether your project is an urban infill multifamily development, a transit-adjacent mixed-use project, a commercial site, or a master-planned community in the broader Salt Lake County market, Evergreen Design Group brings the regulatory knowledge, technical depth, and documentation standards that Salt Lake City’s development environment demands.
Licensed. Experienced. Salt Lake City-specific knowledge.
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Ready to move your Salt Lake City project forward? Send us a brief description of your project type, site location, and schedule — and we’ll follow up with a proposal.