I dug mine out, covered the ground with shredded cedar (an attractive mulch) and planted a diverse set of trees and smaller plants. My city offered a free one hour consultation with a landscaper to select drought tolerant plants I would like and plan an arrangement of them. I replaced all the sprinkler heads with drip irrigation nodes controlled by a Rachio that does smart adjustments like not watering in the rain.

Now we have a beautiful yard with redbud trees and lavender and blue flowering sage plants everywhere. The bees happen to love it. I have a little hibiscus plant which I baby with extra water and it produces stunning flowers one after another.

I’m talking about my front yard there, which has pure ornamental value. The back yard lawn I also dug out but I replaced it with UC Verde Buffalo Grass. This is a rich, soft drought-tolerant grass that looks great short or long and doesn’t require constant watering. You can even stop watering for long periods and it will just go dormant.

I didn’t want to lose the back lawn because I have kids and they play on it.

I did all of the above myself while working full time, except for the tree installations, which did involve a work crew coming out to dig holes.

I have a lot of yard to maintain and it has been a project over the years. Drip irrigation is less “set and forget” than I hoped - every once in a while there’s a line that’s clogged or burst.

But we are in an area that has been embattled with droughts over the years and showering a lawn with sprinklers every morning is just idiotic here. I’d say 70% of my neighborhood have ditched their lawns. Some just let them die and haven’t done shit about it. Others have gone whole hog into stone and succulent makeovers. And the other 30% still overwater their shit until water is flowing out over the sidewalks and down the gutter. These are mostly old people with old ideas - the earth is patiently waiting for them to die off.

I just stopped watering mine. I also live in an area where grass dies quickly without copious irrigation, which should have been the first clue to the previous homeowners to maybe not grow grass.

Lawn is actually really fragile in most climates. Just stop explicitly caring for it, and toss generous amounts of flowers and grasses seeds, and within 1-2 years there’s nothing left.

1. Disband HOA

2. Let it go to seed with native plants.

Check out Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t (aka Joey Santore, aka Tony Santoro). He’s been a vocal advocate for the “kill your lawn” / natural landscaping crowd for a while, and also I just really enjoy him.

He worked on/is working on a cable TV show called “Kill Your Lawn” too, but it’s not super widely available. You can find some episodes of that on YouTube as well.

Sheet mulching

Stop putting on water and chemicals. grass is not very fragil so if it belongs it will survive. all the wildiflowers that will move in and make the who more diverse. If it dosn’t survive it shoudn’t be there anyway