Melissa Dallof

So here she is, all finished. We finished out planting the west side, laid down the crushed gravel maintenance paths and the paver walk, and to the relief of the neighbors, finished the arbor. It may look a little bare still, but the plants will continue to grow and fill in over the years.

So how much do I judge my neighbors with grass now? Not at all! (though I do side-eye the house with the perfectly short velvet-green lawn that they are definitely watering more than allowed). There's a lot to be said about the feasibility of a project like this. It was a huge undertaking. It was a lot of manual labor. It was expensive. We knew we wanted to do this when we bought the house, so we had been saving. We could have saved more money by getting more plant starts from friends rather than the nursery, we bought some bigger and more unusual trees that could have been swapped for less expensive options, and there were more budget-friendly options for the paver walk. On the other hand, we did all of the labor ourselves and with my father-in-law's connections, we were paying contractor prices with no markup for things like topsoil, mulch, sand, gravel, road base and sprinkler parts and we were able to use his machinery at no cost. Depending on your resources, you may be able to do it cheaper. You can also do it much, much more expensively.

This is also not the yard for everyone. We were never using our front yard. The only time I went out there was to mow. Other neighbors on my street use their front lawns - their kids play out there, they have swings in their trees and such, so that's the right setup for them. Your home is a place for you to use and enjoy, and what that means is different for different people.

I would say, though - water-wise perennials are available in all sizes and colors, generally low-maintenance and easy to come by through friends or nurseries. They are cheaper in the long run since they come back every year. We won't save money on water since our secondary water is unmetered, but if drought restrictions continue to tighten, saving water itself is reward enough. I expect our front yard to remain pretty lush with watering only once a week and to continue to survive even watering only every other week once everything is well established. 

So if you have a swath of lawn that isn't used, cut a planting bed in that thing! Plant a few water-wise perennials or self-seeding annuals, or even edible plants. No grocery store tomato will ever taste as good as one you grew yourself. It isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. While doing an entire yard certainly isn't a weekend project, a small planting area can be. 

Thanks for having a look at my yard renovation. I'm sure it's as interesting as looking at someone else's vacation pictures, but I enjoyed blabbing for a while.

After getting the sprinkler lines buried, it's time to start hauling in topsoil to bring the level of the yard back up to the curb. Once top soil is in and sprinkler heads are set and tested, I can start planting. The first tree to go in is a weeping cherry. The plan is to plant a wide variety of perennial plants in reds, oranges, yellows, and purples that will attract bees and hummingbirds and repel deer. I'm really kind of winging the plant selection, but the goal is to have color around all the time, so it's important to get plants that bloom spring, summer, and fall. I bought the vast majority of plants at J&J Nursery in Layton and Millcreek Nursery in Salt Lake. I also picked up some more starts from friends who were dividing their perennials. Actually planting something felt great, as this is definitely one of those "It looks terrible before it starts to look better" projects and planting means we're moving beyond the "dustbowl" part and into the "actual garden" part. We also set the posts for the arbor. The main posts will be cut down to size later, but for now they are very tall to the point that they look weird and are provoking a lot of gently concerned questions from the neighbors.

After the grass is gone, it's time to lay out the bones. The only things staying from the old yard are the gnarly crabapple on the left that is half gorgeous flowering tree and half dead tree hotel for solitary bees, and the peony on the right. The new yard will have a new main path, a side stepping stone path, multiple gravel maintenance paths, an arbor for climbing vines and a new irrigation system. While it seems counterintuitive to install a full sprinkler system while trying to save water, the old system had to go. It was not on a clock, so could not be run in the coolest part of the very early morning to minimize the amount of water lost to evaporation, and it had significant overspray into the street. Since it was only a few heads, it had to be run for long stretches of time to get water deep enough into the grass, making evaporation losses even worse. So while the new system is more extensive, it waters only the planting areas quickly and deeply and is on a clock to run at the coolest time of day. It can also be converted to drip irrigation down the road once the plants are solidly established. Getting it in was many hours of me, my shovel, my blowtorch and a whole lot of podcasts.

I planted a variety of native plants, including hummingbird trumpet (and yes, the hummingbirds love it), columbines, blanketflower, penstemon and globe mallow and waterwise plants like hen and chicks, agastache, milkweed, salvia, Russian sage, poppy mallow, multiple cultivars of coreopsis, meadow rue, lavender, and ornamental onions. My goals in selecting plants were 1) Color! Yellows, oranges, reds and purples, colors to attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. 2) Waterwise. The ultimate goal is to water the yard one time per week or less. 3) Deer-resistant. A herd of deer wander our neighborhood and are not shy about eating ornamental plants, but scented and textured plants like lavender, sage and onions are unappealing to them. 4) Perennial and hardy. 

I planted four trees in my yard - a weeping cherry, a maple, a dwarf ginkgo and a weeping spruce. 

April 23, we started removing all of the grass from our front yard.  
Recommended tools: A father-in-law or other relative who is a retired landscaper, his tractor and a trailer to haul all the grass to the green waste landfill.