Replacing lawns with desert plants could help save water in drier parts of Utah like Washington County. But the shift can be daunting for some. When Kristin Alvey moved to St. George last year, her backyard was a long strip of grass.
Not anymore.
Now, it’s filled with tall green cacti, flowering yucca and her personal favorite: a speckled quadricolor agave that looks like it belongs on the ocean floor.
“Isn't that beautiful?” Alvey gushed. “When the sun hits it, it's real shimmery and metallic looking.”
Not only is her lawn transformation nice to look at, it also cut her water use in half.
That’s why she decided to include her yard as part of the Parade of Gardens Southern Utah, a showcase of 11 gardens in St. George and surrounding communities. The Sept. 20-22 event is presented by Conserve Southwest Utah, along with the Washington County Water Conservancy District, the Southern Utah Home Builders Association and local businesses.
The idea is to give attendees an up-close look at a variety of desert landscaping projects — and hopefully follow the gardeners’ lead.
“I'm excited about the idea of other people realizing that they can transform their yards and save water,” Alvey said. “We need to save water and not water grass. It’s a waste.”
For this fast-growing community in the southwest Utah desert, getting more people to adopt a similar mindset is a critical need.
The conservancy district’s 20-year plan counts on increased conservation to provide around a quarter of the new water the area will need to keep up with the projected growth. Other elements, like reusing wastewater, could also stretch water supplies, but without increasing conservation at the same time, it won’t be enough.
The Parade of Gardens is the latest effort to get residents to cut back on their irrigation. The conservancy district is paying residents up to $2 per square foot of grass that’s replaced by water-smart landscaping. That led people to ditch more than 1 million square feet during the program’s first year in 2023.
Like Alvey, Ivins resident Joe Hoy used the rebate to defray some of the costs for the landscaping project he’s showing.
In the five years since he moved to Utah, Hoy gradually transformed his backyard from bare, sandy ground to a desert oasis that boasts roughly 100 different varieties, including artichoke agaves, chaparral sage and mesquite trees.
“I don't care how many acres you have or if you have just a postage stamp backyard,” Hoy said. “You can make something that really looks nice, and also fits into the environment.”
The work wasn’t easy, though. He dug red rock boulders out of the ground to artfully place them around a curving path. Planting some of the pricklier items came with a learning curve, too.
“I think I've donated a lot of my DNA to some of these cactuses in the form of blood.”
But Hoy said it’s been worth it to see new plants grow while his water bill shrinks.
The landscape makeover — which also included replacing a small patch of irrigated grass with artificial turf — cut his water use in half, he said. To save even more water, he decided to stop using a drip irrigation system and began watering the plants manually to see how little moisture they could get by on.
Organizer Karen Goodfellow, a board member with Conserve Southwest Utah, said seeing what fellow residents have done will hopefully give people the confidence to try lawnless landscaping for themselves.
“People don't realize that you can have a very inviting and serene and peaceful and colorful landscape without a lot of water,” Goodfellow said.
“They can see something in all of these [gardens] that they could do in their yard, even if it's one corner at a time.”
While it might seem like replacing individual lawns wouldn’t make much of a dent, she said around half of all water use in Washington County goes to outdoor irrigation. If enough people get on board, those water savings could add up.
As extreme heat becomes more common and drought creeps back into the region, she said southwest Utah needs every possible water-saving effort it can get.
“The Virgin River is not going to get more water in it, so we have to use what we have very conservatively,” Goodfellow said. “The easiest and the most efficient — meaning the cheapest — way to conserve water is to use less.”
