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Sometimes water conservation is best achieved by changing the landscape as opposed to changing the irrigation system. This means giving up on lawn and converting to something else. Don’t get us wrong, we love lawn. Quite frankly, we make our living on managing and maintaining lawns. That being said, we also hate trying to maintain lawn where it won’t grow or where it's hard or expensive to maintain. The pictures above are examples of where lawn should not be.
Why is lawn where is shouldn’t be? The simplest answer is that lawn is the cheapest part of landscape installation. When lawn is brand new on freshly prepared soil, it looks great. However, parking strips and parking islands are probably the worst place for lawn. There is concrete or asphalt on most or all sides, often times the soil is shallow or there is rock or asphalt below, irrigation coverage is difficult due to small odd shapes, and as tree roots develop, they compete for moisture.
We believe that parking strips and islands may take as much as 5-10 times as much irrigation to maintain. This is a bad combination to grow and maintain lawns. In addition, these areas are difficult and sometimes dangerous to maintain due to nearby cars and obstacles.
What is the Alternative? There are lots of options. Replacing lawn with just barkdust or some sort of groundcover are two options. We have experimented with sedum on green roofs but it has had marginal success. We are seeing locally and nationally the use of rock and we are very excited about that option. Below are several pictures of rock as a groundcover that is very attractive and easy to maintain. Rocks do not need water and never die. Some have expressed concern about the liability risk with rocks but we believe that is low. If someone wants to throw a rock through a window, they will find it even if there is no rock in the landscape.
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