Stumped by Tree Troubles? We're Here for You! - Get Your FREE Estimates!
Stumped by Tree Troubles? We're Here for You! - Get Your FREE Estimates!
By
Big Easy Tree Removal 
Aug 6, 2026 
0 Comments Summary
Who you ask depends entirely on where the tree is going. For public right-of-way and neutral grounds in New Orleans, that is the Department of Parks and Parkways. For a rental, the property owner. For a deed-restricted subdivision, the association. For your own yard, nobody, though Louisiana law still requires you to notify Louisiana 811 before digging. Big Easy Tree Removal helps New Orleans property owners work out which of those applies.
Table of Contents
Permission sounds like a bureaucratic question and it is really a geographic one. The answer changes entirely depending on which side of a line the planting hole sits, and in New Orleans that line is frequently not where people assume. The grass strip out front that you mow every week is very often not yours. The fence that has been there for forty years may not follow the property line. Sorting this out costs nothing before planting and can cost a great deal afterward. Here is who to ask and how, with practical notes from Big Easy Tree Removal.
Before asking anyone for permission, establish where your property actually ends, using your survey or title documents rather than the fence line or the mowing pattern.
Fences get built where it was convenient, where the old one stood, or where someone guessed. They are not evidence of a boundary. Across older New Orleans neighborhoods, fences and property lines disagree often enough that assuming they match is genuinely risky.
The strip between the sidewalk and the street catches out more people than anything else. Homeowners maintain it, mow it, and think of it as part of the yard, and it is typically public right-of-way. Planting there without asking is the single most common permission mistake in this city.
If you cannot locate a survey, your closing documents may include one, and a surveyor can establish the line definitively. For a small ornamental going in the middle of a back yard this is overkill. For anything near a boundary, or for a tree that will still be there in fifty years, it is worth doing properly.