If your permit came back with a replanting condition, the natural next question is which species Urban Forestry will sign off on. Toronto doesn’t publish an answer. There’s no approved list, no banned list, nothing that names cedars or Japanese maples one way or the other for private property. What the city does put in writing is a minimum size, a two-year maintenance obligation, and a requirement that your species selection get sign-off through the replanting plan itself.
That last part is where most of the friction happens. Without a published list, “will this species pass” becomes a judgment call, and the size standard is the clearest signal of what Urban Forestry is actually screening for.
Where the Replanting Requirement Comes From
Three separate situations create a replanting obligation, and they don’t all run through the same section.
A standard removal permit under Chapter 813 carries a condition at §813-20.A: replacement trees must be planted and maintained in good condition for two years, to the satisfaction of the General Manager, following a landscaping and replanting plan the city approves. If your property sits in a ravine or natural feature area, §658-6.B carries the same structure: a plan reviewed to the General Manager’s satisfaction, the same cash-in-lieu formula, and a security deposit of up to 120 percent of total planting cost.
Unauthorized removal works differently. If Urban Forestry issues an Order to Comply after a contravention, the compensation planting isn’t set through §813-20 at all. Right now it’s a flat administrative ratio: five replacement trees for every tree removed without authorization, regardless of size, higher than the permitted-removal formula in the cash-in-lieu breakdown. A tree removed without a permit generates a bigger replanting obligation than the same tree removed with one.
What Toronto Actually Writes Down
Strip away everything implied or assumed, and the how-to-apply page states two concrete requirements for the landscaping and replanting plan: a minimum 50 millimetre caliper for deciduous replacement trees, and a minimum height of 1.75 to 2.5 metres for conifers. It also asks for a planting timeline, typically the next spring or fall planting window.
If §813-20.F trees die or decline within the two-year window, you replace them again, to the same standard, and Urban Forestry expects to inspect once the planting is done under §813-20.G. If the property genuinely can’t accommodate the required number of trees, the city will take cash-in-lieu instead: $583 per tree, defined as 120 percent of the cost to plant and maintain a tree for two years. There’s no separate published rate for ravine replacements; the same 120 percent formula applies under §658-6.B.
Under §813-20.H, a replacement tree you plant under a Chapter 813 permit is protected in its own right, regardless of size. That’s a narrower, pre-existing rule, distinct from the broader condition-planted-tree protections arriving this September.
Species Selection Is a Case-by-Case Call
Here’s the negative finding that matters most: neither §813-20 nor §658-6 names a single species, and neither chapter mentions “native” or “invasive” anywhere in the text. What decides species is the landscaping and replanting plan itself, reviewed and approved to the General Manager’s satisfaction on a per-application basis.
Ravine and natural feature areas are the one place species gets specified outside the plan review. Urban Forestry’s arborist report guidelines state that native trees and shrubs must be planted in ravines and natural areas to help maintain biodiversity. For everything outside ravine boundaries, the same guidelines only encourage a diverse mix of large-growing shade species. Encouraged is not the same as mandated, and it isn’t bylaw text either. It’s departmental guidance that shapes how a reviewer reads your plan, not a rule your arborist can cite chapter and section on.
There’s a separate list that occasionally gets mistaken for a replanting standard: the city’s street-tree species list, covering species like sugar maple, red oak, honey locust, and ginkgo. That list is scoped explicitly to city road-allowance planting. It has nothing to do with what you plant on your own property under a Chapter 813 condition.
If you want an unofficial answer sheet anyway, the closest thing the city publishes is its own Tree Plant Palette, standard drawing T-850.026-3 in the Engineering and Construction Services planting details (Rev 0, September 2021). It’s the recommended plant list the city uses for its own planting work: a species table with native status, size class, and hardiness noted per tree, plus per-species restrictions, like keeping horsechestnuts, buckeyes, and northern catalpa away from ravines and natural areas, and a flagged invasive potential on honeylocust ‘Skyline’ and the lindens. It is not a private-permit standard, and the drawing itself requires Urban Forestry approval for every tree before installation. In practice, though, proposing from this palette is the low-friction route: you’re asking the reviewer to approve something the city already plants.
Development projects running through planning approval, rather than a homeowner permit, fall under the Toronto Green Standard instead, where the native-species math is stricter and written down: minimum 50 percent native plants for on-site landscaping, 100 percent native in ravine or natural heritage system areas, no invasive species at all. That’s a Tier 1 development requirement, not something that reaches an ordinary Chapter 813 removal permit.
What Actually Gets Rejected
Toronto has no written line that says cedars or Japanese maples don’t count as replacement trees. What it has is the 50 millimetre caliper and 1.75 to 2.5 metre height floor, and nursery-typical cedar or ornamental Japanese maple stock often won’t clear it, or won’t read to a reviewer as the large-growing shade tree the guidelines describe. The rejection, when it happens, comes from the size standard and the reviewer’s read of your plan, not a species name on a list.
Compare that to Mississauga, which spells the exclusion out directly. Under its current Private Tree Protection By-law (0021-2022), the replacement spec calls for a shade-bearing tree of a native species, at least 1.8 metres tall for a conifer or at least 6 centimetres in diameter for deciduous, and Mississauga’s rule states plainly: ornamental trees and shrubs, including but not limited to Japanese maples, cedars, and junipers, aren’t suitable replacements. Vaughan does the same for one specific case. Under Tree Protection By-law 177-2025, cedar hedge trees will not be considered as a tree replacement species, full stop.
Mississauga and Vaughan give you written confirmation a species won’t fly. Toronto gives you a size floor and a review process.
How the GTA Compares
Three neighbouring cities publish more than Toronto does, each differently.
Mississauga ties replacement count to diameter at a finer interval than Toronto: one replacement tree for every 15 centimetres of diameter removed, so a 45 centimetre tree requires three. Combined with the named exclusion of ornamentals, cedars, and junipers, Mississauga’s rule reads less like a formula than a specification sheet.
Vaughan uses a tiered schedule instead of a continuous ratio. Under By-law 177-2025, a removed tree 20 to 30 centimetres in diameter requires one replacement, 31 to 40 centimetres requires two, 41 to 50 requires three, and anything over 50 requires four. Small deciduous, multi-stem, and ornamental flowering trees count for two replacements each rather than one, on top of the cedar hedge exclusion above. Replacement stock has to meet a minimum 200 centimetre height for conifers or 50 millimetre caliper for deciduous, close to Toronto’s own floor.
Markham goes further than either. Its by-law (2023-164) uses what it calls an Aggregate Caliper Method: diameter at breast height is replaced centimetre for centimetre with caliper trees measured in 5 centimetre units, with a Progressive Aggregate Caliper Method applying depreciation factors for a tree’s health and structure. Markham also maintains an actual approved list, the Conditional Replanting Tree Selection List, and the city states plainly that all conditionally planted trees must come from it. That list includes genera like Acer, Betula, Gymnocladus, and Quercus. Nothing in Toronto’s bylaw or application pages does the equivalent.
What Changes on September 1, and What Doesn’t
Toronto’s tree bylaw amendments take effect September 1, 2026, and the species-and-size rules aren’t part of what changes. The 50 millimetre caliper and 1.75 to 2.5 metre standard stays exactly as written. The two-year maintenance obligation carries over unchanged. The $583 cash-in-lieu figure, set at 120 percent of two years’ planting and maintenance cost, stays too; a rate revision was floated during the review and deferred to a 2027 study.
What does change is the contravention side. The flat 5:1 administrative ratio for unauthorized removal shifts to a diameter-based system, described by the city as starting at a 5-to-1 ratio and increasing for larger trees. No specific per-diameter tiers have been published. If you’re dealing with a contravention rather than a standard permit condition, budget for a steeper obligation than the old flat rate, and don’t expect a fixed multiplier to plan against yet.
Getting Your Replanting Plan Approved on the First Pass
A replanting plan that only lists tree counts invites a follow-up request. What gets a plan through review cleanly is species and size specified against the actual standard: caliper for deciduous stock, height for conifers, and a rationale that reads as a genuine large-growing shade tree rather than an ornamental substitute. If your lot touches a ravine or natural feature area, that rationale needs a native-species case built in from the start.
Our tree removal permit reports include the replanting plan as part of the submission package, with species and size proposals built to match what Urban Forestry is actually screening for. Contact us with your property address and the permit or Order to Comply reference number, and we’ll confirm scope before the site visit.