PLT-01 · Public records

Reading the plat before the landscape plan

A landscape plan drawn over an unread plat is a sketch over a stranger’s map. The recorded plat already says where the easements run, where the setbacks fall and which corner of the lot drains the street.

Published 6 September 2026 · The Georgia Records Desk editorial team

The plat decides before the designer does

Most residential lots in Georgia sit on a recorded plat: the survey filed with the clerk of superior court when the subdivision was created. That sheet fixes the lot lines and, along them, the easements and setback lines that limit what may be built or planted. It is a public record, and it was public before the house existed.

Anyone planning a residential landscape starts with the same drawing a records reader does: the plan only works where the paper says it may.

What does the plat actually show?

The plat fixes the lot’s geometry and the rights layered over it: utility easements along the sides, drainage easements at the low edge, access easements where a drive serves a neighbor, and the setback lines inside which permanent work is restricted. A tree planted in an easement is a tree someone else may remove to reach a line.

Reading the plat is the same skill as reading the parcel file this guide describes for rural land: the county file on a rural parcel applies the identical order, plat first, to larger ground.

Where do covenants fit?

Subdivision covenants are recorded alongside the plat and impose their own layer: approved plantings, fence rules, tree removal conditions. They are private documents made public by recording, read the way this guide reads any recorded covenant: the text filed with the clerk, not the version a neighbor remembers.

The plat and the covenants are complementary records. The plat shows where you may not dig; the covenants show what you may not plant.

What about drainage?

The plat’s drainage easements mark where water is legally expected to go. A landscape plan that fills, dams or redirects those lines is working against a recorded document, and the neighbors downhill hold the paper. Grading permits and stormwater rules sit at the city or county office, a second file worth checking before the first shovel.

Where a project needs a permit, the permit file becomes part of the same county record, indexed next to the plat that constrained it.

How do you pull your own plat?

The recorded plat is in the clerk’s real estate records, locatable by subdivision name and phase or by the book and page cited in the deed. Many counties’ plats are searchable through the clerks’ shared system; where they are not, the counter copy costs the usual per-page fee described in what a request costs.

Your deed usually names the plat it depends on, which makes the deed the finding aid: read it first, and it tells you which plat to ask for.

The drawing order that saves money

Plat, covenants, then plan. The recorded documents cost nothing to read and settle the boundary questions a designer would otherwise discover mid-project. The landscape plan drawn after the record is the one that survives contact with the easement truck.

What gsccca.org is

The Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority maintains the shared real estate indices used across Georgia counties, including access to recorded plats where counties participate. Its site explains which records are searchable online and which remain counter records, the same division this page relies on for pulling a plat.