Xeriscaping is a trend that has grown more popular in Durango over the last decade. Not only does the approach reduce unnecessary water use, but it assists pollinators and allows homeowners more creative control over their yards’ aesthetics.

Kynan Kelly, owner of Scapegoat Landscaping, said xeriscaping has been on people’s minds for many years. For his business, the trend took off in the winter of 2015-16. Hardly any snow fell in town that winter. Kelly and his crew found themselves installing more artificial turf that January.

He said water shortages and the expense of water for residents is making xeriscaping more necessary. Smaller lawns or no lawns are starting to become preferable to wide lawns or “water-needy” trees.

Xeriscaping projects take up almost 80% of his business these days. So far this year he has had only three or four sod deliveries. Ten years ago, sod would be included in nearly all of Scapegoat’s projects.

“So it’s flipped,” he said. “It’s gone from being 20% xeriscape features to 80% xeriscaped.”

He said there are many aesthetically pleasing yard designs that don’t need grass. Xeriscaped yards are often more functional for residential use than simple swathes of grass that don’t do much, if anything, for residents and pollinators.

Steve Harris, a water engineer, is a longtime advocate when it comes to reducing unnecessary grass. He said Colorado is in the 20th year of a statewide drought. He served on the Animas Basin roundtable established in 2002 and represented that group on the Colorado Interbasin Compact Committee.

By 2010, the drought started to intensify, he said. It was clear that municipal water use needed to be cut, mostly for the Front Range.

“Because that’s the economic engine of the state,” he said. “If they don’t have enough water, the state’s not going to do well.”

Harris said about 40% to 55% of Colorado’s water use is for watering lawns and the same applies to Durango and much larger municipalities like Denver. He said conserving water use on lawns in Durango hardly has an impact on the state’s water supply in the big picture because the population here pales in comparison to the Front Range.

But if there is going to be a successful push for big cities to cut back on unnecessary water use, that change needs to be led by example, he said.

Durango resident Rachelle Fish said she and her husband converted their grass lawn to a xeriscaped yard in 2018-19.

Fish said she’s always felt guilty about her water consumption in the face of climate change. Even though she removed the grass from her front yard, her yard isn’t lacking vegetation. Flowers and other small plants are plentiful, and a young maple tree sits near the middle of the yard with deer fencing around it.

“Lavender goes crazy here,” she said. “The little orange ones (flowers) are hummingbird trumpets, I think.”

She also grows yarrow, prairie prone gayfeather, ninebark and penstemon.

“We were able to find a great landscaper that helped us pick plants that are relatively native and don’t get eaten by deer, mostly,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of fun just filling in the blanks over the last couple of years.”

If about half of municipal water in towns and cities across the state goes to watering lawns, what happens to the other half? Harris said it gets used inside the home.

“Of the water that is used in-house, 95% of it gets back to the river system through the wastewater plants,” he said. “So almost none of it’s consumed. It can be reused, retreated.”

Of the half spent on lawns, only 20% or 30% at best ever makes it back to the river system, he said.

Harris recalled a phrase someone told him years ago: “You know you’ve got too much grass if the only time you walk on it is to mow it.”

Although there are proponents of xeriscaping and less water consumption, there is pushback too, he said.

“There’s lots of people saying, ‘We like the green grass.’ Welp, yeah, but we just don’t have enough water to have green grass,” he said.

Jarrod Biggs, deputy finance director for the city, said some Durango residents are quite gung-ho about supporting more lawns in town. But a majority of residents support the idea of using “reasonable amounts of water” and being conscious about water usage.

Biggs said he is aware of xeriscape programs across Colorado, but to his recollection Durango has never considered any sort of incentive to get residents to cut back on their water use by converting their yards to reduced- or no-grass designs.

The only incentive the city provides for xeriscaping is the inherent drop in water bill prices, he said.

Biggs ran the numbers on Friday and said based on current rates, the water bill for a city resident using the citywide average of 5,900 gallons per month would cost $28.28

He said the most famous example of an incentive program for xeriscaping is the green-cash-for-green-grass program in Las Vegas.

Officially called the “Water Smart Landscapes Rebate,” the program is hosted by the Southern Nevada Water Authority and offers a rebate of $3 per square foot of grass removed and replaced with desert landscaping. The rebate is available for residential properties, businesses, homeowners associations and multifamily properties, according to the water authority.

Castle Rock also has a buyback program, the Residential ColoradoScape Renovation rebate. It’s meant to encourage residents to convert landscapes with “water-thirsty plant material, such as Kentucky bluegrass, into water wise landscapes.”

The program offers a rebate of $1.20 per square foot for removal of at least 400 square feet or an entire yard of water-thirsty vegetation and replacing it with low- or no-water alternatives, with a maximum rebate amount of $1,800 per water account.

Residents are also required to complete a Water Wiser workshop and meet other program requirements, according to Castle Rock Water.

On June 8, Gov. Jared Polis signed the Turf Replacement Program Act into law. The act allocated $2 million from the state general fund to the replacement turf fund and tasked the Colorado Water Conservancy Board with creating a program to incentivize water-wise landscapes.

Fish, who lives in the Riverview area, said her family receives a lot of compliments on their xeriscaped yard. She said it looks like it took a lot of work, but it didn’t.

“And it just kind of keeps on giving. Every year, it’s fun to come out here and see what’s really taking off and what’s not,” she said. “So yeah, we’re having a lot of fun with it.”

She said supporting local pollinators with local vegetation is something her family was conscious of, as well.

Kelly, with Scapegoat Landscaping, said water not spent on lawns can be directed to trees and native plants and pollinating plants that are still beautiful but more compatible with the Southwest Colorado climate.

Supporting pollinating insects and birds has become a bigger part of the xeriscaping conversation, he said. It works like a catch phrase – people hear it and like the idea of lending nature a helping hand.

“And certainly, our nurseries have contributed to it by supplying more and more attractive pollinators that fit right into landscapes that are beautiful as well as helping out our pollinating insects and birds,” he said.

Other benefits include a reduced or eliminated need for the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

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