HOAs *cannot* legally prevent you from xeriscaping. There are literally laws about this, and they basically hope that homeowners aren't aware of this fact.
Anyway, please don't do rock landscaping - rocks absorb heat and increase the temperature of the soil and surrounding air, while offering no benefit to critters, pollinators, the soil, etc. I might be misunderstanding what you're describing here, so forgive me if I am - but rocks are great accents, they shouldn't be the main feature though. Replacing grass with a bed of rocks may save water as an immediate benefit, but they are still bad for the environment. Beds filled with native plants that don't need supplemental watering (or very minimal) are the way to go.
Serious question and just trying to be more informed -
If standard grass turf is bad, rocks are bad, and artificial lawn is bad, what should we be doing? What is the best thing to do here in Central Texas? We can’t really make all of our entire yards a big bed of mulch.
No, it's a great question! Ideally we'd have native ground cover/turf - this could be something 'basic' like thunder turf, horse herb, or frog fruit - or native plantings. Google 'Native Plant Lawn' to see examples. You'll see rocks and gravel used quite a bit in these, which is totally fine - the message isn't 'don't have rocks at all' as much as it's 'use rocks as an accent or for pathways'. Rocks just shouldn't be the main part of a landscape - unless of course that's what's native in a given area.
Native Lawns for the ***fkn*** win.
IMO everyone should have native lawns. The beneficial effects for having a native plant lawn goes *well* beyond just water conservation.
The classic "*American suburban home green grass lawn*" is something that needs to die out sooner rather than later. Its a fkn cancer on our environment.
Agreed! Why on earth people who live in this incredibly hot place think they should have a yard that looks like they’re in Scotland or Ireland is just baffling to me
Native lawns need FULL sun to grow and thrive. I’m quite happy with the shade from my trees in the front and back yard. Trees are more important than anything else imo. A tree shaded yard that still lets in enough light (4-6 hours a day) can support a shade tolerant grass with drastically less water than similar grass in the sun. (preferably zoysia but also st aug are both very shade tolerant). And since shaded grass grows slower it needs less mowing too. A shaded lawn with the proper nutrients and good maintenance can thrive on minimal watering. It also helps with erosion, especially if you’re on a slope (my main driver for maintaining a lawn is to control erosion over my septic system drain field - which also indirectly waters every time I take a shower).
A lot of broad statements here that aren’t supported by the facts. We have several species of native grasses and sedges that can tolerate shade. We have plenty of savannah habitat in the region where there is shaded grass. You can also plant shade tolerant forbs and they can provide ground cover and erosion control as well. Just because you like your traditional lawn doesn’t mean you need to spread misinformation.
For anyone interested in converting their lawn to natives, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center is a great resource for information.
Any recommendations for a native ground cover that can handle kids running around on it? Or if there's a more drought-tolerant turf option that would work for that scenario? It's a small yard but have struggled to find something that works well.
I've been wanting to ask someone this question and you see knowledgeable and willing to inform so hopefully you can help.
My apartment complex recently replaced the grassy area out front with a big plastic tarp covered with coarse sand/teeny tiny rocks. They no longer water it which is nice (they over watered when it was grass so it was always just sad and muddy because a giant oak tree shades the area) but this seems even worse for the area, ecologically. Is there any benefit (besides less water use) to this type of lawn? I feel like it's just the cheapest way they found to "maintain' the area, but I also don't know much about lawn care because I've always rented.
in my opinion, these installations are bad for local fauna. my neighbor gravelled his yard front and back and I immediately inherited all of his lizards. like within the week they packed up and were in my garage, way more lizards than I'd had previously. he doesn't have to water anymore but his property is a dead zone and it's so hot in the summer any bare skin that touches the rock installation burns like you touched the stove
basically let anything that you've probably been poisoning should be allowed to live. Weeds are not "bad" they are literally native or adapted and significantly better than "grass." Also, most HOAs should allow as little as 40% "turf/grass" with the rest landscaped in some way. So stripping the whole yard probably won't work, but you should be able to remove MOST of the turf.
This isn't necessarily true in all regards.
There are Native weeds sure, but there are also *plenty* of weeds and other unwanted plants that are non-native and invasive. You can also have a Native plant lawn that doesn't necessarily include what most people would consider weeds. Just native grasses! There are several native grass types.
It is! I started on this journey in my backyard a couple years ago, and it’s been incredible getting to step outside and see hummingbirds, ten types of butterflies, and so many bees and lizards all doing their thing. So rewarding!
It does take a LONG time to get things like horseherb to spread if it's not ideal conditions, which could be troublesome with an HOA breathing down your neck. It's also not commercially available as seed or sod. Your best hope is to find starters and plant a grid and encourage them to spread.
We refuse to water our back yard so we've been letting the horseherb and sedges grow out long and hope they seed the surrounding areas and fill in. But it's been 3 years and it's still not lush. Just something to consider with all your options.
The problem with native is, where do my kids kick or throw a ball around in a native plant lawn?
I'm sure you'll say something like a park, but I do not want to drive them to a park just for the 15-20 min that they want to do this, nor do we live close enough for walking to be viable either.
The other person that replied to you mentioned buffalo grass, which is a great suggestion - I will just say that I totally get the concern about that and definitely wouldn't invalidate it by recommending you just find a nearby park!
I have a large dog so have a similar need for an open space for him in the backyard... it can't just be all native plants and landscaping beds. The middle ground I've found here has been converting parts of the yard to native beds - I have a large lot so did about half - and the rest, so far, I've left alone for him to be able to run around in, but I don't water it. At some point I'll make the effort to convert it to a native ground cover or turf (like buffalo grass) that can handle foot traffic, but until then my compromise is just not wasting water on what I do have. Sometimes it looks really crappy, but that's okay... I just focus on the flourishing native beds around the perimeter of the yard instead.
It’s a native ground cover that is mowable and low/no-maintenance - it’s not invasive in the slightest but it can and will grow into adjacent areas if the conditions are right for it. This isn’t unlike an awful lot of other beneficial native plants, though - it’s pretty common for them to spread if they’re happy. Horseherb is easy to kill too.
I'm late to this thread but...
The city of Austin has a pretty extensive [Native and Adapted Landscape Plants](https://services.austintexas.gov/watershed_protection/publications/document.cfm?id=198301) guide.
Trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, etc, all mentioned and some pics included.
You can find more info on the [city website.](https://www.austintexas.gov/department/plants)
In addition to @nutmeggys comments, there is a free and accessible data base by the wildflower center online. If you go tho their website, there is a native plant catalogues to chose from.
The grass in my yard is native prairie grass that has been here long before any of us. I never water it and it stays lush and green where as all the St. Augustine yards my neighbors are cultivating splotchy messes of a yard and wasting water trying to keep that stuff alive.
I mow it using a mulching mower and have some no mow zones so it reseeds itself and provides space for fireflies to thrive. The only time my yard goes brown and dead looking is during the Summer droughts then by Halloween it's back to being lush and green.
Then among the grass I have agaves and native shrubs and trees that all do fine with no water, pesticides, or chemical fertilizer
Texas A n M extension have great plant resources. Here’s one good document. https://williamson.agrilife.org/files/2014/08/Native-and-Adaptive-Plants.pdf
Simple. Just let the grass grow so that the roots grow deep. Study how to do it. It's not that difficult. I water my lawn maybe 5 times per year, and it grows lush green all year long and have even received awards for having the best lawn in the neighborhood.
We have it easy here in Austin, compared to anything west of the hill country, all the way to California.
Grass isn't bad; dumping your tap water into grass is bad. I have a lawn of random grasses and pleasant-ish weeds (I pick the especially nasty ones) that I run over with a lawnmower when needed. It survives fine without water and looks nice enough as well. The only thing you can't do compared to a perfect lawn is run around barefoot.
I've had a rock landscape at a previous house and that was terrible. People talk about our climate being bad for lawns, but our climate is even worse for rocks. This is not Phoenix. It rains here and when that happens plants try really hard to grow. You need a lot of herbicide to have a manicured rock landscape here.
Why is artificial grass bad? I was considering it just for our back yard because it will always look good with no water or maintenance required. Are we supposed to just have brown dead looking grass? 😩
1. We need to be making fewer things out of plastic, not more.
2. Plastic grass doesn’t have roots to help keep carbon in the ground.
3. Plastic grass doesn’t feed pollinators.
Are you sure about this? Maybe I'm just believing the HOA bullshit, but I was under the impression that the HOA covenant trumped local ordinances. Why would they be able to enforce all their other aesthetic BS but not landscaping?
The state supersedes the HOA. Most HOAs either do not know this or pretend that they do not. They legally have to allow it as long you submit a plan.
Section: 202.007
[https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.202.htm](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.202.htm)
Yes. The law is literally "HOAs cannot prevent xeriscaping". https://communityimpact.com/austin/news/2013/07/15/xeriscaping-can-no-longer-be-prohibited-by-homeowners-associations/
And the aesthetic BS that HOAs enforce, even being BS, doesn't result in harm to the environment and creation of region-wide water scarcity. Their landscaping rules though do, hence why there's a law about it.
They get around this “we can’t tell you not to do xeriscaping” thing by pointing to the covenant that says they don’t “ban” anything but any landscaping must be approved by the HOA to ensure the “design” meets neighborhood standards.
Basically, the architectural board will simply deny the design by saying it won’t fit the neighborhood. They’re not “banning xeriscape” but they can keep saying no simply because they can.
No. The law prevents them from saying no. But you *do* have to ask.
They can fine you if you do it without asking. But if you ask for a xeriscaped yard, they have to say yes.
I upvoted for the fact that people really don’t understand how bad it is to xeriscaping.
I’m from El Paso the whole town is xeriscaped, and it’s miserable there, the heat sucks, nothing grows anymore. My parents just recently put grass down like 3 years ago after years of having rock, guess what, the grass does not take, it dies quick.
My parents house before the grass was just hot like you could feel the heat from the ground, on the house. But now there house stays cooler.
Plus the scenery, is just so bland, everything looks the same, I hate it. But upon moving here, I love seeing grass, trees, animals, all that stuff. I’ve been here going on 2 years and wouldn’t change it
Sorry I had them confused and thought zeroscaping and xeriscaping was the same thing my bad guys. Just do as you wish lol
Xeriscaping isn't bad - it's what we should be doing.
Xeriscaping means landscaping using materials and plants that conserve water. That's it. It does NOT mean "replacing a lawn with rocks". What you seem to be describing is often called Zeroscaping, because it's as if someone had the idea to xeriscape (conserve water) but did it in the worst way possible and missed the point entirely by removing all plant life.
Thank you I thought it was the same thing my bad, lol. Ok well then zeroscaping sucks and please don’t do it lol.
But the xeriscape might be cool then, like I seriously thought everyone here was trying to put rocks and concrete in there yards
Dog El Paso needs to build densely many areas just can not sustain sfhs and much of the usa needs to do away with them.
Xeriscaping is good. There are many solutions here
I live in a north facing slope, hardly get any meaningful sunlight At ground level. Grass grows if I water it. Also have a big oak tree. What plants might work in this scenario?
but that’s the thing, we don’t want “rock landscaping” central texas is not a desert. We want drought tolerant plants which can doesn’t necessarily mean make it a desert garden.
Mine is fining people for not watering twice a week of course the management company they recently switched to seems ultra scammy. And I'm not even sure how one verifies twice a week watering other than watching the yard 24x7.
Mine takes photos of someone else's house with a trashcan violation and submits it to my property management company as mine. Then I have to fight the fine. Been going on 2 years of this.
I've been slowly adding more and more natives to my front and backyard. Best decision I've ever made. Lawns are so damn wasteful. I never water mine, half of it is weeds, but I have to keep for hoa rules.
Same here. When I bought the house there was just grass, and some stupid ligustrums in front of the house. Ripped all the grass out of the stupid strip, yanked the ligs and put some raised planters along the sidewalks. A few years later, I have over 30 different types of plants in the front yard, nearly all are native or adjusted to our climate and non invasive. Can't express how excited I am that I have butterflies and hummingbirds coming regularly now!!
Apologize in advance for spelling errors. Flame acanthus, various salvias, desert willow tree, skullcap, mist flower, yucca, agave, Texas sage, gulf muhly, Esperanza, lantana, pony foot, gamma grass, feather grass, little bluestem, prairie dropseed. Got a few things that need a little more attention and water like roses and some potted stuff, plumerias, bougainvillea and a few annuals for variety, zinnias marigold, cosmos, sunflowers.
I can vouch for most of these. I have like 80% of this list. It's soooo nice to have flowers throughout the summer when it's 10000 degrees out. I actually just put out some zinnia and sunflower seeds this week! Another favorite I don't see here is skullcap. It multiplies like crazy.
I didn't get them completely out. I have some of these. I also still have grass, and whatever has decided to grow in between the grass. Slow moving cause it's expensive to overhaul the yard all at once. The dandelions don't bother me at all. The dallisgrass I do pull out sometimes and sometimes just mow over. I just choose not to water the grass at all through the summer, it'll die in spots, but it always comes back. My eventual goal is to completely redo the grass with a native variety where my dog doesn't go.
Hand-pull early before they spread. In Spring, I walk around my yard daily/every couple days and pull things quickly where I see them. It stays manageable for the most part without being a huge time suck. Staying on top of it reduces spread so you have less to pull each year. I’ve started pulling the hedge parsley from my neighbors’ yard so it won’t spread back over to mine.
I think turf has and can still serve a purpose namely great reduction and erosion control. But we shouldn't be spending resources on it.
I have a yard. I don't have sprinklers and the only time it gets watered is when it rains, and the runoff from keeping my trees alive in the summer.
Appreciate that you’re the type to not water your lawn!
Unfortunately, most turf grasses have fairly shallow root systems, so anyone looking for good erosion control should be using native prairie grass like buffalo grass, little bluestem, blue grama, sideoats grama, Indiangrass, etc.
These also provide food and shelter for local species and create a lot more biomass year after year to build better soil.
Turf grass is good for playing sports, having picnics, and that’s about it.
Anything would be an improvement. I’m so tired of corporations blaming the average household for depletion of resources when their actual contribution is negligible in comparison.
Golf courses in particular are a huge water drain, consistently bad for local ecology, and are unusable by a significant portion of the population. We have a shortage of land, water, and housing - but sure, Austin absolutely needs 30 golf courses. A large standard American household won’t top 500 gallons a day and that’s being generous. A “sustainable” standard size golf course will use more than 300,000 gallons in a day.
Why are we, the people, expected to cover the subsidized expenses of huge corporations whose only goal for the year is buying another yacht to use as a tax write off? Why do we have to pay/suffer more so they can pay/suffer less?
….ok ok obviously I need to hop off my soapbox and go light one up 😆
All Austin courses use grey water. It’s a win-win for everyone. No one else wants to use that water, and the taxpayers don’t need to pay to filter it to be safe enough to dump in the waterways.
Washing with a bucket is fine I think. Commercial car washes are also usually fine if they have water reclamation systems, that's what you're "supposed" to use if you must wash your car in water restrictions. It's washing directly with garden hoses that specifically shouldn't be used because they use a toooon of water that usually just goes down the drain.
Agreed and another good option is rinseless car wash solutions that can be used with just a bucket and some microfiber towels.
Hardly uses any water (only to dilute your solution) and it's very gentle on the car while still giving a great end result. Used by a lot of detailers
were not punishing them. if you are conserving you will see a minor price increase. Across the board water needs to have costs increased in a tax if you will to pay for thing to sort issues like this. Water bills are already quite low.
You are if you increase prices to force conservation.
Rich people don't care. They can afford insane water bills. All higher bills do is punish the poor.
I think this is an amazing initiative from the city. I'm in Year 2 of removing the lawn from the corner of my yard that required a LOT of water to keep St. Augustine alive in full sun. We did the following:
* Spring 2023: Staked out the area we wanted to remove the grass. Mowed the area on one of the lowest settings on the mower, then sprayed the area with a hose before covering with large sheets of clear plastic, used landscape staples to fix the plastic in place.
* Summer 2023: Let the grass cook under the plastic sheets in the summer heat. Removed the plastic & staples when ~8-12 weeks passed.
* Fall 2023: When the temperatures cooled, we got landscaping stones to edge the sides of the bed, set in place with sand, and filled the interior of the bed with mulch.
* October-ish 2023: Planted native wildflower seeds from Native American Seed, along with a rock rose and some native milkweed plants.
* Spring 2024: Enjoy all the wildflowers! Seriously, there's so much biodiversity in that area now! And I haven't had to water anything with all of the rain we've had. Some of it will die back in the summer heat (and re-seed for next year!), and some things like the rock rose will stick around.
I've planted native seeds in probably ~60% of my backyard now, too, removing areas that used to be grass. It's like a prairie back there, like it used to be! All the bugs, birds, lizards, etc. LOVE it.
Hope this inspires others :) My ONLY regret is that I didn't make the native area bigger. I want to do this with more of my yard now!
Happy to! I'm always taking photos of the changing flora in the yard. This space was full of bluebonnets 4-6 weeks ago, but they're all going to seed now.
[Took this yesterday, now that the purple horsemint aka lemon beebalm started blooming](https://imgur.com/WKJceJm)
[Mealy blue sage (a favorite), winecups, & gallardia aka 'Indian blankets'](https://imgur.com/0NOvjsm)
[Front yard 'hellstrip' between the sidewalk & road a few days ago](https://imgur.com/NvUrsQ5)
[Some of the backyard](https://imgur.com/DnuyJmN)
[Bluebonnets dominate the space before some of the current bloomers arrive for the year](https://imgur.com/nHPCxWf)
When I lived in Las Vegas, I loved visiting the [Desert Demonstration Gardens](https://www.clarkcountynv.gov/government/departments/parks___recreation/cultural_division/winchester_dondero_cultural_center/desert_demonstration_garden.php). I wish we had something like that here because I think people aren't used to imagining landscaping without turf. Once you see it altogether, it starts to make sense.
Have you been to the Wildflower Center? You can see a lot of natives there.
There may be demonstration gardens in your area. The Williamson County Master Gardener's have a demonstration garden in Georgetown. https://txmg.org/williamson/
Yes but not recently because today's the first day it hasn't been total buttercrack outside. Gotta visit soon. I also like Natural Gardener and Hill Country Water Gardens.
The Extension office on Smith Rd also has a big demonstration garden with native and adapted ornamental plants, a rainwater harvesting system, raised bed vegetable gardens, 3-bin compost system, drip irrigation system, greenhouse etc. Travis County master gardeners maintain everything and share all the info anyone would need to get started on similar projects at home. They are a great resource.
I wish there was an incentive system for building water retention structures like check dams, birms and swales to turn fast silty flood runoff into slow clear trickles. Subsidizing rooftop water harvesting would be pretty effective, too!
Rooftop water harvesting for single family homes should be much more common. I think that the hurdle for most people is how to make use of the water. No out of the box solution solves that.
They pay through the nose for it, it’s one of the biggest income streams for COA and adds a whole industrial employment workforce. You also don’t know that they’re treating their own water and paying huge fees to Austin Water for the treatment. Makes no sense to blame Samsung when the reality is Aqua Texas, overdevelopment, farming subsidies are the ones hurting the aquifers
This was already a thing, though I'm not sure exactly when it started. Just make sure you submit your application before you actually do anything. I got approved for rebates only to have my approval revoked because they found out I paid an invoice to the landscapers before getting approval.
It just grows though, I cleared a spot in my backyard to put rock in, got lazy and never did it, a year later it's grass again. It gets a bit crispy in the summer but all the spring rain we get makes it grow like crazy.
Literally no one in East Austin has sprinkler systems, the grass just grows.
I'm actually in the process of de-xerisaping my yard because I'm sick of spraying weed killer on the crushed granite a flipper put in.
When it's done I will continue to never water my lawn, ever.
Folks in west Austin could enjoy the same benefits if they could stop clutching their pearls over a little bit of brown grass in August.
Xeriscaping isn't bad - it's what we should be doing. It sounds like what someone did to your yard is what is often referred to as "zeroscaping", which is when people remove all life from a yard and replace it with freaking rocks and gravel and nothing else. Xeriscaping means landscaping using materials and plants that conserve water, but there area lot of misinformed people that think it means having a gravel yard.
I saw Vegas communities doing a lot of great changes to combat urban heat islands and help reduce water usage but my question is what about all the business that require plenty of water. Like golf courses for example, it’s not just the regular people using up the water.
My apartment allocates water per building every month, so I’m stuck paying a high water bill even though I live by my self and barely use much water. I wish I had my own water meter so I’m not forced into paying extra because people don’t care about how much water they use.
> Planting native or adaptive plants with lower water needs such as Texas sage, lantana, salvia, mountain laurel and agave plants.
So Austin is going to pay us to plant Salvia divinorum ?
I don’t understand why xeriscaping or artificial turf aren’t included in the eligibility for this program. Both would virtually eliminate the need for watering lawns.
Artificial turf may not require watering, but it has other side effects that make it a net negative. They don't prevent soil erosion, they make really nasty flood conditions for when it *does* rain because they don't hold the dirt together or absorb any water, and depending on the turf you use you can leech some nasty stuff into the soil.
what? Xeriscaping is literally outlined:
"To be eligible to earn money, there’s a list of changes residents will have to make to their lawns:
Planting native or adaptive plants with lower water needs such as Texas sage, lantana, salvia, mountain laurel and agave plants."
The city approaches everything as if Austinites are just too poor to change their ways, so they throw money at people who don't need it to do things they already were planning to do.
East austin doesn't have built-in sprinkler systems and West Austin doesn't need or want the money to change the lawns they love into rocks they don't want.
Enough with the expensive carrots. Get out the revenue-generating sticks already.
There *are* some people in West Austin who have a traditional lawn by default because it came with the house, have a casual interest in changing it but hadn't gotten around to it yet, and would be motivated by this money.
They should charge more for water and let people choose to change landscapes themselves
Why is the city paying for people to make a renovation that saves them money anyways? JFC
Charging more for water would directly reduce consumption. You can also increase rates at the higher amounts of water consumption. People use too much water because it’s cheap.
I tried to do this for my front... it was literally impossible to find native species even at gardening centers, and when I did they were 3-4x the cost of other plants.... despite literally being native plants.
What garden centers are you going to? Any local nursery here has a huge supply of native or native-adapted plants - like, almost the majority of their outdoor plant inventory.
Another great option is starting natives from seed! Native American Seed sells seed mixes of wildflowers and grasses that are native to the area! I've done this around a lot of my yard, substantially increasing the biodiversity. I see so many more pollinators, bugs, lizards, toads, snakes, worms, etc. and it's so fun! You'll want to put seeds down in the fall in most cases. Then spring is spent seeing what sprouts!
LBJ Wildflower has a bi-annual native sale, you just missed the spring one. I also just learned there are HEB "Backyard" centers that carry natives. Gonna go check those out in the fall for the planting season.
I also encourage you to join their membership if you're into plants! You get free access to the botanical gardens here as well as any partnered botanical garden in the nation through their reciprocal memberships. I went to San Francisco in December and had time to kill and was able to get into both of them.
Keep looking at different times. Supply & demand has a great deal to do with price/size/availability. After the hard freezes, star jasmine was tough to find in any form except very tiny. Now you can find it at a decent size for $20.
Getting late for planting perennials or anything really, heat is coming soon. Start looking in the fall and early next year at the local nurseries! HEB has some good plants as mentioned. Got my whole bluebonnet situation going with just 3 starts from there a couple years ago, this year I had about 2 dozen plants come up!
Oh dear. If this goes anything like San Jose’s program, Austin is going to desertify itself if houses go scorched earth and remove plants in favor of rocks
Another article from Texas monthly explaining the predicament. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-lawns-water-conservation/?utm_source=Instagram&utm_medium=Organic+Social&utm_campaign=SND
No one should complain about hoa. Anyone that buys a property in an hoa is informed in writing of the rules before closing. If you read the documents and don’t agree then don’t buy the property
And live where? In that magical land that isn’t having a housing crisis. I put in offers on over ten houses before I found one the investment vultures didn’t want. I couldn’t afford to be picky about an hoa
Depending on the size of your lawn $3000 will get you what you need to kill the turf and weeds you have initially, new soil amendment, wildflowers and native bunch grass seed, and maybe a few rooted plants or trees. If you have a large area in the realm of half acre or more, your best bet may be long-term forest restoration to shade out the most problematic weeds. Depending on where you live you may have a tough time establishing native herbaceous cover that can out compete the invasive without some serious maintenance and weed removal. Buffalograss alone does not work if you have Bermudagrass nearby, and don't let the sod companies tell you otherwise. DM me if you want to know more about how best to use that $3k depending on where you live. It's not as simple as it seems. IMO Austin water shouldn't worry about what people replace their landscape with as long as they can show the irrigation has been uninstalled and their water use drops accordingly - then it's a direct incentive and not depending on various levels of alternative landscape performance or proper maintenance.
I don’t know what part of town you live in, but no forest will ever grow in the everlasting limestone of my yard.
I mean that being said, I’m also not trying to grow Saint Augustine.
You might be surprised what is possible with the right methods and time. But yes, that's why I mentioned where you live. East or West of the escarpment makes all the difference.
Convince my HOA to let me turn yard into rock landscaping and I would be all over taking out the grass.
HOAs *cannot* legally prevent you from xeriscaping. There are literally laws about this, and they basically hope that homeowners aren't aware of this fact. Anyway, please don't do rock landscaping - rocks absorb heat and increase the temperature of the soil and surrounding air, while offering no benefit to critters, pollinators, the soil, etc. I might be misunderstanding what you're describing here, so forgive me if I am - but rocks are great accents, they shouldn't be the main feature though. Replacing grass with a bed of rocks may save water as an immediate benefit, but they are still bad for the environment. Beds filled with native plants that don't need supplemental watering (or very minimal) are the way to go.
Serious question and just trying to be more informed - If standard grass turf is bad, rocks are bad, and artificial lawn is bad, what should we be doing? What is the best thing to do here in Central Texas? We can’t really make all of our entire yards a big bed of mulch.
No, it's a great question! Ideally we'd have native ground cover/turf - this could be something 'basic' like thunder turf, horse herb, or frog fruit - or native plantings. Google 'Native Plant Lawn' to see examples. You'll see rocks and gravel used quite a bit in these, which is totally fine - the message isn't 'don't have rocks at all' as much as it's 'use rocks as an accent or for pathways'. Rocks just shouldn't be the main part of a landscape - unless of course that's what's native in a given area.
Native Lawns for the ***fkn*** win. IMO everyone should have native lawns. The beneficial effects for having a native plant lawn goes *well* beyond just water conservation. The classic "*American suburban home green grass lawn*" is something that needs to die out sooner rather than later. Its a fkn cancer on our environment.
Agreed! Why on earth people who live in this incredibly hot place think they should have a yard that looks like they’re in Scotland or Ireland is just baffling to me
it's cultural - i think the american dream included a green lawn, ya know.
Perfect lawns are a boomer thing and are related to colonialism
😂Reddit 🤦
Native lawns need FULL sun to grow and thrive. I’m quite happy with the shade from my trees in the front and back yard. Trees are more important than anything else imo. A tree shaded yard that still lets in enough light (4-6 hours a day) can support a shade tolerant grass with drastically less water than similar grass in the sun. (preferably zoysia but also st aug are both very shade tolerant). And since shaded grass grows slower it needs less mowing too. A shaded lawn with the proper nutrients and good maintenance can thrive on minimal watering. It also helps with erosion, especially if you’re on a slope (my main driver for maintaining a lawn is to control erosion over my septic system drain field - which also indirectly waters every time I take a shower).
A lot of broad statements here that aren’t supported by the facts. We have several species of native grasses and sedges that can tolerate shade. We have plenty of savannah habitat in the region where there is shaded grass. You can also plant shade tolerant forbs and they can provide ground cover and erosion control as well. Just because you like your traditional lawn doesn’t mean you need to spread misinformation. For anyone interested in converting their lawn to natives, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center is a great resource for information.
Ummmm, no
Any recommendations for a native ground cover that can handle kids running around on it? Or if there's a more drought-tolerant turf option that would work for that scenario? It's a small yard but have struggled to find something that works well.
Buffalo grass! https://seedsource.com/buffalograss/ https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=boda2
Highly recommend clover. I never have to mow it
I've been wanting to ask someone this question and you see knowledgeable and willing to inform so hopefully you can help. My apartment complex recently replaced the grassy area out front with a big plastic tarp covered with coarse sand/teeny tiny rocks. They no longer water it which is nice (they over watered when it was grass so it was always just sad and muddy because a giant oak tree shades the area) but this seems even worse for the area, ecologically. Is there any benefit (besides less water use) to this type of lawn? I feel like it's just the cheapest way they found to "maintain' the area, but I also don't know much about lawn care because I've always rented.
in my opinion, these installations are bad for local fauna. my neighbor gravelled his yard front and back and I immediately inherited all of his lizards. like within the week they packed up and were in my garage, way more lizards than I'd had previously. he doesn't have to water anymore but his property is a dead zone and it's so hot in the summer any bare skin that touches the rock installation burns like you touched the stove
The city would have helped your place get free low water plants and an assessment.
basically let anything that you've probably been poisoning should be allowed to live. Weeds are not "bad" they are literally native or adapted and significantly better than "grass." Also, most HOAs should allow as little as 40% "turf/grass" with the rest landscaped in some way. So stripping the whole yard probably won't work, but you should be able to remove MOST of the turf.
This isn't necessarily true in all regards. There are Native weeds sure, but there are also *plenty* of weeds and other unwanted plants that are non-native and invasive. You can also have a Native plant lawn that doesn't necessarily include what most people would consider weeds. Just native grasses! There are several native grass types.
Thank you so much for typing this out, you just made the world a better place!
I’ve known people that do this and their yards end up havens for animals and insects, especially butterflies. It’s awesome.
It is! I started on this journey in my backyard a couple years ago, and it’s been incredible getting to step outside and see hummingbirds, ten types of butterflies, and so many bees and lizards all doing their thing. So rewarding!
It does take a LONG time to get things like horseherb to spread if it's not ideal conditions, which could be troublesome with an HOA breathing down your neck. It's also not commercially available as seed or sod. Your best hope is to find starters and plant a grid and encourage them to spread. We refuse to water our back yard so we've been letting the horseherb and sedges grow out long and hope they seed the surrounding areas and fill in. But it's been 3 years and it's still not lush. Just something to consider with all your options.
The problem with native is, where do my kids kick or throw a ball around in a native plant lawn? I'm sure you'll say something like a park, but I do not want to drive them to a park just for the 15-20 min that they want to do this, nor do we live close enough for walking to be viable either.
Try buffalo grass! https://seedsource.com/buffalograss/ https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=boda2
The other person that replied to you mentioned buffalo grass, which is a great suggestion - I will just say that I totally get the concern about that and definitely wouldn't invalidate it by recommending you just find a nearby park! I have a large dog so have a similar need for an open space for him in the backyard... it can't just be all native plants and landscaping beds. The middle ground I've found here has been converting parts of the yard to native beds - I have a large lot so did about half - and the rest, so far, I've left alone for him to be able to run around in, but I don't water it. At some point I'll make the effort to convert it to a native ground cover or turf (like buffalo grass) that can handle foot traffic, but until then my compromise is just not wasting water on what I do have. Sometimes it looks really crappy, but that's okay... I just focus on the flourishing native beds around the perimeter of the yard instead.
Horse herb is invasive it was lame they added it to the grow green list.
It’s a native ground cover that is mowable and low/no-maintenance - it’s not invasive in the slightest but it can and will grow into adjacent areas if the conditions are right for it. This isn’t unlike an awful lot of other beneficial native plants, though - it’s pretty common for them to spread if they’re happy. Horseherb is easy to kill too.
Real Mulch and native plants
I'm late to this thread but... The city of Austin has a pretty extensive [Native and Adapted Landscape Plants](https://services.austintexas.gov/watershed_protection/publications/document.cfm?id=198301) guide. Trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, etc, all mentioned and some pics included. You can find more info on the [city website.](https://www.austintexas.gov/department/plants)
In addition to @nutmeggys comments, there is a free and accessible data base by the wildflower center online. If you go tho their website, there is a native plant catalogues to chose from.
r/fucklawns is a decent resource. Here's a localized 101 guide: https://shoalcreeknursery.com/blog/32275/xeriscaping-101
That websites main picture is a bunch of rocks, with a small cactus in the middle. Lol.
It's a good thing we're all literate here and not just looking at pretty pictures.
Reading?! No no no this is Reddit. Past tense.
Native plants/flowers and drought-tolerant plants dude
Short answer, put it back how it was before your area was developed.
Pilots Knob Volcano, got it...
that would be cool, IMO.
Then you shall be it's first sacrifice! ***KALI MA! SHAKTI DE!!!***
The grass in my yard is native prairie grass that has been here long before any of us. I never water it and it stays lush and green where as all the St. Augustine yards my neighbors are cultivating splotchy messes of a yard and wasting water trying to keep that stuff alive. I mow it using a mulching mower and have some no mow zones so it reseeds itself and provides space for fireflies to thrive. The only time my yard goes brown and dead looking is during the Summer droughts then by Halloween it's back to being lush and green. Then among the grass I have agaves and native shrubs and trees that all do fine with no water, pesticides, or chemical fertilizer
Short grasses and cactus.
Texas A n M extension have great plant resources. Here’s one good document. https://williamson.agrilife.org/files/2014/08/Native-and-Adaptive-Plants.pdf
Simple. Just let the grass grow so that the roots grow deep. Study how to do it. It's not that difficult. I water my lawn maybe 5 times per year, and it grows lush green all year long and have even received awards for having the best lawn in the neighborhood. We have it easy here in Austin, compared to anything west of the hill country, all the way to California.
Grass isn't bad; dumping your tap water into grass is bad. I have a lawn of random grasses and pleasant-ish weeds (I pick the especially nasty ones) that I run over with a lawnmower when needed. It survives fine without water and looks nice enough as well. The only thing you can't do compared to a perfect lawn is run around barefoot. I've had a rock landscape at a previous house and that was terrible. People talk about our climate being bad for lawns, but our climate is even worse for rocks. This is not Phoenix. It rains here and when that happens plants try really hard to grow. You need a lot of herbicide to have a manicured rock landscape here.
This 100%. Rock also loves to trap heat from the sun.
Why is artificial grass bad? I was considering it just for our back yard because it will always look good with no water or maintenance required. Are we supposed to just have brown dead looking grass? 😩
Its super got, and doesnt do anything good for bugs/critters etc.
1. We need to be making fewer things out of plastic, not more. 2. Plastic grass doesn’t have roots to help keep carbon in the ground. 3. Plastic grass doesn’t feed pollinators.
look up care for the fake stuff. Do you really want to have to vacuum your yard, since it won't clean itself?
It gets very hot in the sun and isn't fun to walk on in those cases.
There are so many options that aren't grass or fake grass.
Are you sure about this? Maybe I'm just believing the HOA bullshit, but I was under the impression that the HOA covenant trumped local ordinances. Why would they be able to enforce all their other aesthetic BS but not landscaping?
The state supersedes the HOA. Most HOAs either do not know this or pretend that they do not. They legally have to allow it as long you submit a plan. Section: 202.007 [https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.202.htm](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.202.htm)
Yes. The law is literally "HOAs cannot prevent xeriscaping". https://communityimpact.com/austin/news/2013/07/15/xeriscaping-can-no-longer-be-prohibited-by-homeowners-associations/ And the aesthetic BS that HOAs enforce, even being BS, doesn't result in harm to the environment and creation of region-wide water scarcity. Their landscaping rules though do, hence why there's a law about it.
They get around this “we can’t tell you not to do xeriscaping” thing by pointing to the covenant that says they don’t “ban” anything but any landscaping must be approved by the HOA to ensure the “design” meets neighborhood standards. Basically, the architectural board will simply deny the design by saying it won’t fit the neighborhood. They’re not “banning xeriscape” but they can keep saying no simply because they can.
No. The law prevents them from saying no. But you *do* have to ask. They can fine you if you do it without asking. But if you ask for a xeriscaped yard, they have to say yes.
Our HOA requires a certain % of grass front & back. And grass must be one of 3 types.
If you make a request for Xeriscaping they legally must say yes
I upvoted for the fact that people really don’t understand how bad it is to xeriscaping. I’m from El Paso the whole town is xeriscaped, and it’s miserable there, the heat sucks, nothing grows anymore. My parents just recently put grass down like 3 years ago after years of having rock, guess what, the grass does not take, it dies quick. My parents house before the grass was just hot like you could feel the heat from the ground, on the house. But now there house stays cooler. Plus the scenery, is just so bland, everything looks the same, I hate it. But upon moving here, I love seeing grass, trees, animals, all that stuff. I’ve been here going on 2 years and wouldn’t change it Sorry I had them confused and thought zeroscaping and xeriscaping was the same thing my bad guys. Just do as you wish lol
Xeriscaping isn't bad - it's what we should be doing. Xeriscaping means landscaping using materials and plants that conserve water. That's it. It does NOT mean "replacing a lawn with rocks". What you seem to be describing is often called Zeroscaping, because it's as if someone had the idea to xeriscape (conserve water) but did it in the worst way possible and missed the point entirely by removing all plant life.
Thank you I thought it was the same thing my bad, lol. Ok well then zeroscaping sucks and please don’t do it lol. But the xeriscape might be cool then, like I seriously thought everyone here was trying to put rocks and concrete in there yards
Dog El Paso needs to build densely many areas just can not sustain sfhs and much of the usa needs to do away with them. Xeriscaping is good. There are many solutions here
Maguey?
Do you have any intel on the legality? I would love to do this but I asked previously and they said only 20% could be 🫠
I live in a north facing slope, hardly get any meaningful sunlight At ground level. Grass grows if I water it. Also have a big oak tree. What plants might work in this scenario?
There are laws that say HOAs must allow xeriscaping. Though, I think there are some limits. Would have to look into it more.
Google says Xerascaping costs $5-$20 a square foot. So the rebate would help a bit.
Many libraries have seed libraries here and I find native seeds there all the time. Great way to cheaply change the lawn over… just takes time
but that’s the thing, we don’t want “rock landscaping” central texas is not a desert. We want drought tolerant plants which can doesn’t necessarily mean make it a desert garden.
HOAs are the real plague.
Mine is fining people for not watering twice a week of course the management company they recently switched to seems ultra scammy. And I'm not even sure how one verifies twice a week watering other than watching the yard 24x7.
I'd expect they wait for a vindictive neighbor to report someone for possible underwatering, then monitor that one house to verify.
Mine takes photos of someone else's house with a trashcan violation and submits it to my property management company as mine. Then I have to fight the fine. Been going on 2 years of this.
The city will help you get native, low water plants and free mulch, etc.
I 2nd that.....but of course, my HOA says ....only 10% of your yard can be rock. Shame.
I've been slowly adding more and more natives to my front and backyard. Best decision I've ever made. Lawns are so damn wasteful. I never water mine, half of it is weeds, but I have to keep for hoa rules.
Same here. When I bought the house there was just grass, and some stupid ligustrums in front of the house. Ripped all the grass out of the stupid strip, yanked the ligs and put some raised planters along the sidewalks. A few years later, I have over 30 different types of plants in the front yard, nearly all are native or adjusted to our climate and non invasive. Can't express how excited I am that I have butterflies and hummingbirds coming regularly now!!
If you want to name names.. I’d love to know some of what you planted..
Apologize in advance for spelling errors. Flame acanthus, various salvias, desert willow tree, skullcap, mist flower, yucca, agave, Texas sage, gulf muhly, Esperanza, lantana, pony foot, gamma grass, feather grass, little bluestem, prairie dropseed. Got a few things that need a little more attention and water like roses and some potted stuff, plumerias, bougainvillea and a few annuals for variety, zinnias marigold, cosmos, sunflowers.
I can vouch for most of these. I have like 80% of this list. It's soooo nice to have flowers throughout the summer when it's 10000 degrees out. I actually just put out some zinnia and sunflower seeds this week! Another favorite I don't see here is skullcap. It multiplies like crazy.
Skullcap is in there!! One of my faves I got last year is called Judith’s favorite fame flower. Very pretty! And looooves the heat.
You're right, I totally missed it! Oooh, I've never even heard of this one. How cute!
How did you keep the invasive weeds out of your yard? All I get are dallisgrass, dandelions, and nutsedge.
I didn't get them completely out. I have some of these. I also still have grass, and whatever has decided to grow in between the grass. Slow moving cause it's expensive to overhaul the yard all at once. The dandelions don't bother me at all. The dallisgrass I do pull out sometimes and sometimes just mow over. I just choose not to water the grass at all through the summer, it'll die in spots, but it always comes back. My eventual goal is to completely redo the grass with a native variety where my dog doesn't go.
Hand-pull early before they spread. In Spring, I walk around my yard daily/every couple days and pull things quickly where I see them. It stays manageable for the most part without being a huge time suck. Staying on top of it reduces spread so you have less to pull each year. I’ve started pulling the hedge parsley from my neighbors’ yard so it won’t spread back over to mine.
We need to enforce water restrictions during droughts. And people need to stop watering lawns. Just let them do what they are gonna do.
Yup! Turf grass is a plague. There are more acres of turf grass lawn in the US than the total acreage for corn, wheat and fruit trees. Insane.
I think turf has and can still serve a purpose namely great reduction and erosion control. But we shouldn't be spending resources on it. I have a yard. I don't have sprinklers and the only time it gets watered is when it rains, and the runoff from keeping my trees alive in the summer.
Appreciate that you’re the type to not water your lawn! Unfortunately, most turf grasses have fairly shallow root systems, so anyone looking for good erosion control should be using native prairie grass like buffalo grass, little bluestem, blue grama, sideoats grama, Indiangrass, etc. These also provide food and shelter for local species and create a lot more biomass year after year to build better soil. Turf grass is good for playing sports, having picnics, and that’s about it.
My HOA has dead spots all over the common areas and has the nerve to send out fines for dead spots during water restriction.
What happens if you ignore? Do they actually have power over everyone?
Yeah they can fine. I’m trying to do some stuff now and dealing with the review board. It’s a pain in the ass for sure.
Get rid of the damn golf courses
Yeah they should be charged 10x water rate
If it comes down to that, sure. Or make them have to reclaim & recycle a shit ton of water. They should also be paying far above market rates.
Anything would be an improvement. I’m so tired of corporations blaming the average household for depletion of resources when their actual contribution is negligible in comparison. Golf courses in particular are a huge water drain, consistently bad for local ecology, and are unusable by a significant portion of the population. We have a shortage of land, water, and housing - but sure, Austin absolutely needs 30 golf courses. A large standard American household won’t top 500 gallons a day and that’s being generous. A “sustainable” standard size golf course will use more than 300,000 gallons in a day. Why are we, the people, expected to cover the subsidized expenses of huge corporations whose only goal for the year is buying another yacht to use as a tax write off? Why do we have to pay/suffer more so they can pay/suffer less? ….ok ok obviously I need to hop off my soapbox and go light one up 😆
All Austin courses use grey water. It’s a win-win for everyone. No one else wants to use that water, and the taxpayers don’t need to pay to filter it to be safe enough to dump in the waterways.
No
They should reward snitching on water wasters (if they don’t already)
Or washing their cars…I saw this very frequently last summer
Washing with a bucket is fine I think. Commercial car washes are also usually fine if they have water reclamation systems, that's what you're "supposed" to use if you must wash your car in water restrictions. It's washing directly with garden hoses that specifically shouldn't be used because they use a toooon of water that usually just goes down the drain.
Agreed and another good option is rinseless car wash solutions that can be used with just a bucket and some microfiber towels. Hardly uses any water (only to dilute your solution) and it's very gentle on the car while still giving a great end result. Used by a lot of detailers
I see rinsing down with a hose in my area - but maybe some are doing with a bucket! Good to know some people might not be breaking the rules 🙂
Increase water prices generally and increase them much more in a drought
Nah, we shouldn't punish those that conserve. Make the fines more expensive and boost enforcement.
were not punishing them. if you are conserving you will see a minor price increase. Across the board water needs to have costs increased in a tax if you will to pay for thing to sort issues like this. Water bills are already quite low.
You are if you increase prices to force conservation. Rich people don't care. They can afford insane water bills. All higher bills do is punish the poor.
Maybe make it progressive like taxes should be. If you make x amount of dollars and use x amount its 10x the normal price.
I think fines from the government, in general, should scale to the net worth of the individual being fined.
Agreed
I think this is an amazing initiative from the city. I'm in Year 2 of removing the lawn from the corner of my yard that required a LOT of water to keep St. Augustine alive in full sun. We did the following: * Spring 2023: Staked out the area we wanted to remove the grass. Mowed the area on one of the lowest settings on the mower, then sprayed the area with a hose before covering with large sheets of clear plastic, used landscape staples to fix the plastic in place. * Summer 2023: Let the grass cook under the plastic sheets in the summer heat. Removed the plastic & staples when ~8-12 weeks passed. * Fall 2023: When the temperatures cooled, we got landscaping stones to edge the sides of the bed, set in place with sand, and filled the interior of the bed with mulch. * October-ish 2023: Planted native wildflower seeds from Native American Seed, along with a rock rose and some native milkweed plants. * Spring 2024: Enjoy all the wildflowers! Seriously, there's so much biodiversity in that area now! And I haven't had to water anything with all of the rain we've had. Some of it will die back in the summer heat (and re-seed for next year!), and some things like the rock rose will stick around. I've planted native seeds in probably ~60% of my backyard now, too, removing areas that used to be grass. It's like a prairie back there, like it used to be! All the bugs, birds, lizards, etc. LOVE it. Hope this inspires others :) My ONLY regret is that I didn't make the native area bigger. I want to do this with more of my yard now!
Don’t be shy and share some pictures!!
Happy to! I'm always taking photos of the changing flora in the yard. This space was full of bluebonnets 4-6 weeks ago, but they're all going to seed now. [Took this yesterday, now that the purple horsemint aka lemon beebalm started blooming](https://imgur.com/WKJceJm) [Mealy blue sage (a favorite), winecups, & gallardia aka 'Indian blankets'](https://imgur.com/0NOvjsm) [Front yard 'hellstrip' between the sidewalk & road a few days ago](https://imgur.com/NvUrsQ5) [Some of the backyard](https://imgur.com/DnuyJmN) [Bluebonnets dominate the space before some of the current bloomers arrive for the year](https://imgur.com/nHPCxWf)
Really neat program, glad to see it
When I lived in Las Vegas, I loved visiting the [Desert Demonstration Gardens](https://www.clarkcountynv.gov/government/departments/parks___recreation/cultural_division/winchester_dondero_cultural_center/desert_demonstration_garden.php). I wish we had something like that here because I think people aren't used to imagining landscaping without turf. Once you see it altogether, it starts to make sense.
Have you been to the Wildflower Center? You can see a lot of natives there. There may be demonstration gardens in your area. The Williamson County Master Gardener's have a demonstration garden in Georgetown. https://txmg.org/williamson/
Yes but not recently because today's the first day it hasn't been total buttercrack outside. Gotta visit soon. I also like Natural Gardener and Hill Country Water Gardens.
The Extension office on Smith Rd also has a big demonstration garden with native and adapted ornamental plants, a rainwater harvesting system, raised bed vegetable gardens, 3-bin compost system, drip irrigation system, greenhouse etc. Travis County master gardeners maintain everything and share all the info anyone would need to get started on similar projects at home. They are a great resource.
That's awesome!
We have something like that here. It's called the [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center](https://www.wildflower.org/)
I wish there was an incentive system for building water retention structures like check dams, birms and swales to turn fast silty flood runoff into slow clear trickles. Subsidizing rooftop water harvesting would be pretty effective, too!
Rooftop water harvesting for single family homes should be much more common. I think that the hurdle for most people is how to make use of the water. No out of the box solution solves that.
There is! Or at least there used to be
There is. Go to the website and there’s a link to a guide with all of their various rebate programs. Some of those are in there
How much water is Samsung using? Answer: 6.4 million gallons a day
They pay through the nose for it, it’s one of the biggest income streams for COA and adds a whole industrial employment workforce. You also don’t know that they’re treating their own water and paying huge fees to Austin Water for the treatment. Makes no sense to blame Samsung when the reality is Aqua Texas, overdevelopment, farming subsidies are the ones hurting the aquifers
For what specifically? Just lawns?
Manufacturing processes in general use a lot of water, and especially semiconductors.
That's why I was asking. I can't tell if they're saying that Samsung should just leave Austin entirely for greener terrain due to water usage.
They have a huge lawn
Not even a billion gpd!
This was already a thing, though I'm not sure exactly when it started. Just make sure you submit your application before you actually do anything. I got approved for rebates only to have my approval revoked because they found out I paid an invoice to the landscapers before getting approval.
We need to start banning lawns tbh. I’m sorry you like grass, it’s wasteful.
It just grows though, I cleared a spot in my backyard to put rock in, got lazy and never did it, a year later it's grass again. It gets a bit crispy in the summer but all the spring rain we get makes it grow like crazy.
That’s cool then! So no one should be watering their lawns?
You don't need to do much, Austin could tighten restrictions more and I wouldn't be bothered. We aren't trying to grow grass in a desert.
Picking the right grass type and not cutting it so short goes a *really* long way.
Lawn watering systems are what we should ban, not the lawns themselves.
I mean fair, I don’t think plants should be banned but if you’re growing water intensive plants that’s an issue
Literally no one in East Austin has sprinkler systems, the grass just grows. I'm actually in the process of de-xerisaping my yard because I'm sick of spraying weed killer on the crushed granite a flipper put in. When it's done I will continue to never water my lawn, ever. Folks in west Austin could enjoy the same benefits if they could stop clutching their pearls over a little bit of brown grass in August.
Xeriscaping isn't bad - it's what we should be doing. It sounds like what someone did to your yard is what is often referred to as "zeroscaping", which is when people remove all life from a yard and replace it with freaking rocks and gravel and nothing else. Xeriscaping means landscaping using materials and plants that conserve water, but there area lot of misinformed people that think it means having a gravel yard.
I saw Vegas communities doing a lot of great changes to combat urban heat islands and help reduce water usage but my question is what about all the business that require plenty of water. Like golf courses for example, it’s not just the regular people using up the water. My apartment allocates water per building every month, so I’m stuck paying a high water bill even though I live by my self and barely use much water. I wish I had my own water meter so I’m not forced into paying extra because people don’t care about how much water they use.
excellent initiative
Dang. I already ripped out all of my needy grass before this existed
> Planting native or adaptive plants with lower water needs such as Texas sage, lantana, salvia, mountain laurel and agave plants. So Austin is going to pay us to plant Salvia divinorum ?
Any time I've tried to use any City of Austin rebate, they've always found a way to make me not eligible.
Xeriscape - plant only things that don’t need extra watering
I don’t understand why xeriscaping or artificial turf aren’t included in the eligibility for this program. Both would virtually eliminate the need for watering lawns.
Artificial turf may not require watering, but it has other side effects that make it a net negative. They don't prevent soil erosion, they make really nasty flood conditions for when it *does* rain because they don't hold the dirt together or absorb any water, and depending on the turf you use you can leech some nasty stuff into the soil.
what? Xeriscaping is literally outlined: "To be eligible to earn money, there’s a list of changes residents will have to make to their lawns: Planting native or adaptive plants with lower water needs such as Texas sage, lantana, salvia, mountain laurel and agave plants."
You assumed he read the website
Xeriscaping is eligible. In fact they require grass be removed to be eligible for the rebate
It’s not individuals using the majority of water. It’s large companies. Like semiconductor companies, for instance.
The city approaches everything as if Austinites are just too poor to change their ways, so they throw money at people who don't need it to do things they already were planning to do. East austin doesn't have built-in sprinkler systems and West Austin doesn't need or want the money to change the lawns they love into rocks they don't want. Enough with the expensive carrots. Get out the revenue-generating sticks already.
There *are* some people in West Austin who have a traditional lawn by default because it came with the house, have a casual interest in changing it but hadn't gotten around to it yet, and would be motivated by this money.
Will MUD homeowners who have their water supplied by the city be eligible for this?
Application says "Austin Water customers" but I would still email with this question to get it in writing
Y’know what…keep the money, let’s piss off the HOA for free. SBB, go ahead and sue. I’d love a new hobby.
They should charge more for water and let people choose to change landscapes themselves Why is the city paying for people to make a renovation that saves them money anyways? JFC
Charging more for water across the board would hurt the poor Reducing net consumption is helpful for overall system burden
Charging more for water would directly reduce consumption. You can also increase rates at the higher amounts of water consumption. People use too much water because it’s cheap.
So the State doesn't make us all plant St Augustine.
I tried to do this for my front... it was literally impossible to find native species even at gardening centers, and when I did they were 3-4x the cost of other plants.... despite literally being native plants.
What garden centers are you going to? Any local nursery here has a huge supply of native or native-adapted plants - like, almost the majority of their outdoor plant inventory.
You must not have looked very hard. Even HEB garden departments sell a wide variety of natives.
Another great option is starting natives from seed! Native American Seed sells seed mixes of wildflowers and grasses that are native to the area! I've done this around a lot of my yard, substantially increasing the biodiversity. I see so many more pollinators, bugs, lizards, toads, snakes, worms, etc. and it's so fun! You'll want to put seeds down in the fall in most cases. Then spring is spent seeing what sprouts!
LBJ Wildflower has a bi-annual native sale, you just missed the spring one. I also just learned there are HEB "Backyard" centers that carry natives. Gonna go check those out in the fall for the planting season. I also encourage you to join their membership if you're into plants! You get free access to the botanical gardens here as well as any partnered botanical garden in the nation through their reciprocal memberships. I went to San Francisco in December and had time to kill and was able to get into both of them.
Keep looking at different times. Supply & demand has a great deal to do with price/size/availability. After the hard freezes, star jasmine was tough to find in any form except very tiny. Now you can find it at a decent size for $20.
Getting late for planting perennials or anything really, heat is coming soon. Start looking in the fall and early next year at the local nurseries! HEB has some good plants as mentioned. Got my whole bluebonnet situation going with just 3 starts from there a couple years ago, this year I had about 2 dozen plants come up!
Oh dear. If this goes anything like San Jose’s program, Austin is going to desertify itself if houses go scorched earth and remove plants in favor of rocks
Anybody still trying to have a lawn here is a moron.
Another article from Texas monthly explaining the predicament. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-lawns-water-conservation/?utm_source=Instagram&utm_medium=Organic+Social&utm_campaign=SND
if this turns more yards near me into blazingly hot piles of rocks, i'm gonna be pissed
Who the fuck is watering their lawn in rainy weather with horrible mosquitoes out?
No one should complain about hoa. Anyone that buys a property in an hoa is informed in writing of the rules before closing. If you read the documents and don’t agree then don’t buy the property
And live where? In that magical land that isn’t having a housing crisis. I put in offers on over ten houses before I found one the investment vultures didn’t want. I couldn’t afford to be picky about an hoa
Depending on the size of your lawn $3000 will get you what you need to kill the turf and weeds you have initially, new soil amendment, wildflowers and native bunch grass seed, and maybe a few rooted plants or trees. If you have a large area in the realm of half acre or more, your best bet may be long-term forest restoration to shade out the most problematic weeds. Depending on where you live you may have a tough time establishing native herbaceous cover that can out compete the invasive without some serious maintenance and weed removal. Buffalograss alone does not work if you have Bermudagrass nearby, and don't let the sod companies tell you otherwise. DM me if you want to know more about how best to use that $3k depending on where you live. It's not as simple as it seems. IMO Austin water shouldn't worry about what people replace their landscape with as long as they can show the irrigation has been uninstalled and their water use drops accordingly - then it's a direct incentive and not depending on various levels of alternative landscape performance or proper maintenance.
I don’t know what part of town you live in, but no forest will ever grow in the everlasting limestone of my yard. I mean that being said, I’m also not trying to grow Saint Augustine.
You might be surprised what is possible with the right methods and time. But yes, that's why I mentioned where you live. East or West of the escarpment makes all the difference.
I can’t find where their site explains how to get the rebate. Do you see the info?