Landscaping in Dunwoody

Dunwoody was incorporated as a city on December 1, 2008 and had a population of 51,683 at the 2020 census. Much of the residential fabric is subdivision development on rolling wooded ground, and the landscape questions that come with that are consistent: lots that fall away behind the house, storm runoff collecting where the grade flattens, and lawns that were planted when the trees were half their present size.

The soil is the same Cecil-type profile that runs under the whole Georgia Piedmont, a sandy loam surface over red clay subsoil, kaolinitic and rated low for shrink-swell. It does not swell and it does not heave. It refuses water at rate, absorbing on the order of half an inch an hour by the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District figure, which is well short of what an Atlanta summer storm delivers. Everything past that becomes surface flow, and on a graded subdivision lot surface flow finds the low corner.

Jurisdiction is the practical difference. Tree removal thresholds, land disturbance triggers and buffer rules in Dunwoody are set by DeKalb County and the City of Dunwoody rather than by the Sandy Springs Development Code, so a project here starts with a check against the correct authority. What does carry across is state law: the Georgia Water Stewardship Act limits outdoor landscape irrigation to the hours between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m. everywhere in the state, and the Erosion and Sedimentation Act establishes a 25-foot buffer along the banks of state waters and 50 feet along designated trout streams.

Dunwoody also falls inside the Metro North Georgia Water Planning District, which covers fifteen counties including DeKalb and Fulton, so the district water-efficiency requirements for new landscape irrigation systems connected to a public supply apply on both sides of the county line. Rain sensor shut-offs, pressure regulation and subsurface methods in narrow strips are the practical consequences.