Grass Isn't Always Greener
Recognizing the limits of its water supply, Salt Lake City promotes xeriscaping
Eight years ago, Mark Vlasic was approached by a concerned neighbor who asked him, “Did you know your lawn is dying?” To which Vlasic gleefully replied, “I killed it!” His neighbor’s befuddlement was understandable: Vlasic is a principal at Landmark Design Inc., a Salt Lake City landscape architecture firm—not the sort of person one would expect to have a brown yard. But Vlasic was making the transition from a grass lawn to a drought-tolerant yard. He may have been in the xeriscaping vanguard in his community, but Vlasic sees water-wise landscaping as a definite trend in the Salt Lake City area. He says the look of the city has changed over the last five years and notes that all the potential clients who contact his firm “want some type of water conservation” element in their landscaping.
At first glance, it hardly seems surprising that interest in water-wise landscaping should be increasing in the second-driest state in the Union, which recently suffered through six years of such meager rainfall that then-Governor Olene Walker was prompted to declare an agricultural drought disaster in 2004. According to David Rice, the conservation programs manager for the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, 60% to 65% of treated (i.e., drinking quality) water in the state is used on landscaping. Facing those kinds of numbers and the specter of water shortages that regularly haunts the western United States, Jordan Valley Water—the largest municipal water district in Utah—in 2000 adopted a conservation goal of reducing per-capita water usage in its service area by 25% by the year 2025. Rice believes “we’re behind where we should be,” in terms of embracing conservation measures, especially in comparison to other western states, but he maintains that “the momentum is moving in the right direction.” Progress is being made, he says, despite the fact that “water is cheap here, so there’s no incentive to change poor habits.”
Vlasic thinks short memories are another problem, noting that interest in xeriscaping wanes when there’s a good water year, like 2005. Dale Torgerson, who teaches xeriscaping to homeowners and commercial landscapers at the Utah Botanical Center in Kaysville, agrees: “As long as there’s ample water, people don’t think much about it [sustainable landscaping].” One person who does seem to have given the subject a great deal of thought is Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who had his yard xeriscaped with consultation from the Utah Botanical Center. “This needs to be a lifestyle change,” he explains, “not just a response to an acute situation.” Vlasic echoes that sentiment: “Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing. People forget that we live in the desert.”
Vlasic, who recently served as president of the Utah chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, advocates the development of a distinctive design aesthetic that recognizes the area’s dry climate. He believes Salt Lake City residents shouldn’t let themselves be so strongly influenced by landscaping magazines published on the East Coast that glorify green lawns. The challenge, he says, “is to create a sense of unity on the street but to get away from the lawn aesthetic.”
Anderson is another one who believes green lawns should be passé in the Salt Lake area. “Unless you’re going to walk on it,” he declares, “there’s no reason to have turf anymore.” Not everyone agrees. Rice of Jordan Valley Water insists “turf isn’t the enemy,” as long as it is used appropriately and watered wisely. Stephanie Duer—the water conservation program coordinator for Salt Lake City—concurs, explaining that xeriscaping simply entails a set of water management principles and has nothing to do with the plant palette. Even a traditional landscape incorporating turf, she points out, can be xeriscaped if it’s done right. For that reason, she doesn’t even like to use the term xeriscape, mindful that for some people, it conjures up images of a desert landscape that may not be to everyone’s liking. As Torgerson puts it, people complain that xeriscaping is “not pretty ... All they think of is maybe a cactus and some sagebrush and a rock.”
Vlasic acknowledges that the new aesthetic “requires a more open mind about what a yard is and what it should look like.” He recognizes that changing mindsets is a difficult task, though, leading to arguments about “what’s a weed and what’s a flower?” Torgerson, who advised Anderson on his lawn makeover, emphasizes that it’s important for people to see good examples of xeriscaping in order for the practice to gain acceptance. Otherwise, people tend to dismiss it as unattractive: Torgerson notes that some detractors even call it “zeroscaping.”
 |
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Critics of xeriscaping would have difficulty arguing that this flower-filled landscape, even without turf, is unattractive. |
In addition to neighbors’ perceptions, legal requirements may be another hurdle faced by would-be xeriscapers. Anderson knows this firsthand: His water-wise yard may technically be in violation of Salt Lake City’s landscape ordinance, which Duer declares is one of “the most convoluted and complicated of any municipality in the western United States.” According to both Anderson and Duer, the current language of the ordinance is unclear. Anderson is proposing a revision to the ordinance—the details of which Duer is hammering out with the city’s planning department—under which turf would not be required, and vegetation would not need to cover more than one-third of the front yard. According to Anderson, there is no organized opposition to the ordinance revision; when interviewed for this article, he expected the revision to pass easily by the end of 2006. (Dave Buhler, chair of the Salt Lake City Council, said it was hard for him to comment on the ordinance without having seen it but said the council was “looking forward to receiving it.”) Anderson also notes other efforts to promote xeriscaping, such as the three-tiered system of water rates the city implemented in order to reward conservation and to make heavy water users pay more. Duer has designed a demonstration garden at the city and county building and a native plant garden at the endearingly named Pork Chop Park, and she is planning more demonstration gardens in a variety of styles for locations all over the city, including the public utilities building, a library, and the Avenues, a historic neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
 |
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Up to 65% of Utah's treated water is used on landscapes, many of them traditional turf yards like this example. |
Vlasic gives Salt Lake City credit for pioneering drought-tolerant landscaping, noting that the city has been “more progressive in promoting these ideas. Some of the outlying communities still haven’t made that leap.” But change is on the horizon, according to Rice. The district, which wholesales water to several cities in Salt Lake County (although not to Salt Lake City), developed a model landscape ordinance for its member agencies to use as a template that they could customize to fit the needs of their respective communities. “More residents are becoming educated” about xeriscaping, says Rice, and the growing awareness is forcing cities into action. He points to West Valley City, South Jordan, Draper, and Murray as member agencies that have all revised their landscaping ordinances and observes that the Salt Lake County Council is reviewing a proposed landscape ordinance that would apply to unincorporated areas.
Of course, it’s a little easier to fight City Hall when you’re the mayor, and Anderson’s bully pulpit has probably worked to his advantage. Alexandra Eframo has had a decidedly different experience. The Delta Airlines retiree has been fighting a running battle with officials in the city of West Jordan, a rapidly growing suburb in Salt Lake County, over her attempts at xeriscaping. Heeding official calls by the state to “slow the flow” during the drought, Eframo decided to turn off her sprinklers five years ago. “Stupid me,” she recounts. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with dry grass.” Her neighbors felt differently, however, and Eframo—who laughingly calls herself “the Rosa Parks of xeriscaping”—began racking up citations for zoning violations. According to her, one such citation actually ordered her to water her lawn. But Eframo had a different idea, and she began planting drought-tolerant flowers and shrubs instead. Facing misdemeanor charges and a maximum $700 fine or 90-day jail sentence, Eframo contested the citations in court, where she was represented by a retired judge working pro bono who argued that the city’s ordinance was unconstitutionally vague. The city’s case against Eframo was dismissed in May 2006.
 |
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Not a cactus in sight: This garden demonstrates that a desert landscape can have abundant color and plant variety. |
Eframo’s experience seems to encapsulate many of the issues associated with xeriscaping: politics, aesthetics, and individual expression. Seeking some relief from what she calls harassment by West Jordan officials, Eframo contacted a Utah state senator, asking him to champion legislation at the state level to allow xeriscaping. Perhaps to avoid being drawn into the latest skirmish in the western water wars, he declined, saying—according to Eframo—that it was an issue for individual municipalities to regulate. So the indefatigable Eframo, recovering from recent surgery to implant a pacemaker, is determined to appear before the West Jordan City Council once she has regained her strength in order to persuade the city to change its landscaping ordinance. (Ironically, West Jordan—a Jordan Valley Water member agency—has already revised its ordinance in response to the Eframo case, using the water district’s model ordinance. Rice of Jordan Valley Water maintains that West Jordan’s ordinance doesn’t discourage water-wise landscaping, although he says it does require some turf grass.) Eframo speaks as if she is on a mission: “All my neighbors were wasting water [during the drought] like you wouldn’t believe. If I can encourage just a couple of people [to conserve water] .…”
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Steve Stewart, who defended Eframo in court, thinks the complaints about Eframo’s landscaping are mostly related to aesthetics, noting that “traditionally, it’s expected that you have green grass.”
But Eframo chafes at the limitations of other people’s expectations: “Sure, my lawn doesn’t look like everybody else’s. Why not have something that’s a conversation piece?” Echoing the philosophy expressed by both Vlasic and Duer that drought-tolerant yards can be a means of personal expression, Eframo poses a rhetorical question as old as the American West itself: “Why should we have the city telling us what kind of lawn we should have?”
Author's Bio: Based in Santa Barbara, CA, Journalist Amy R. Ramos writes on scientific and technical subjects.
May-June 2007
Grass Isn't Always Greener
Recognizing the limits of its water supply, Salt Lake City promotes xeriscaping
Eight years ago, Mark Vlasic was approached by a concerned neighbor who asked him, “Did you know your lawn is dying?” To which Vlasic gleefully replied, “I killed it!” His neighbor’s befuddlement was understandable: Vlasic is a principal at Landmark Design Inc., a Salt Lake City landscape architecture firm—not the sort of person one would expect to have a brown yard. But Vlasic was making the transition from a grass lawn to a drought-tolerant yard. He may have been in the xeriscaping vanguard in his community, but Vlasic sees water-wise landscaping as a definite trend in the Salt Lake City area. He says the look of the city has changed over the last five years and notes that all the potential clients who contact his firm “want some type of water conservation” element in their landscaping.
At first glance, it hardly seems surprising that interest in water-wise landscaping should be increasing in the second-driest state in the Union, which recently suffered through six years of such meager rainfall that then-Governor Olene Walker was prompted to declare an agricultural drought disaster in 2004. According to David Rice, the conservation programs manager for the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District, 60% to 65% of treated (i.e., drinking quality) water in the state is used on landscaping. Facing those kinds of numbers and the specter of water shortages that regularly haunts the western United States, Jordan Valley Water—the largest municipal water district in Utah—in 2000 adopted a conservation goal of reducing per-capita water usage in its service area by 25% by the year 2025. Rice believes “we’re behind where we should be,” in terms of embracing conservation measures, especially in comparison to other western states, but he maintains that “the momentum is moving in the right direction.” Progress is being made, he says, despite the fact that “water is cheap here, so there’s no incentive to change poor habits.”
Vlasic thinks short memories are another problem, noting that interest in xeriscaping wanes when there’s a good water year, like 2005. Dale Torgerson, who teaches xeriscaping to homeowners and commercial landscapers at the Utah Botanical Center in Kaysville, agrees: “As long as there’s ample water, people don’t think much about it [sustainable landscaping].” One person who does seem to have given the subject a great deal of thought is Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who had his yard xeriscaped with consultation from the Utah Botanical Center. “This needs to be a lifestyle change,” he explains, “not just a response to an acute situation.” Vlasic echoes that sentiment: “Sometimes it’s about doing the right thing. People forget that we live in the desert.”
Vlasic, who recently served as president of the Utah chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, advocates the development of a distinctive design aesthetic that recognizes the area’s dry climate. He believes Salt Lake City residents shouldn’t let themselves be so strongly influenced by landscaping magazines published on the East Coast that glorify green lawns. The challenge, he says, “is to create a sense of unity on the street but to get away from the lawn aesthetic.”
Anderson is another one who believes green lawns should be passé in the Salt Lake area. “Unless you’re going to walk on it,” he declares, “there’s no reason to have turf anymore.” Not everyone agrees. Rice of Jordan Valley Water insists “turf isn’t the enemy,” as long as it is used appropriately and watered wisely. Stephanie Duer—the water conservation program coordinator for Salt Lake City—concurs, explaining that xeriscaping simply entails a set of water management principles and has nothing to do with the plant palette. Even a traditional landscape incorporating turf, she points out, can be xeriscaped if it’s done right. For that reason, she doesn’t even like to use the term xeriscape, mindful that for some people, it conjures up images of a desert landscape that may not be to everyone’s liking. As Torgerson puts it, people complain that xeriscaping is “not pretty ... All they think of is maybe a cactus and some sagebrush and a rock.”
Vlasic acknowledges that the new aesthetic “requires a more open mind about what a yard is and what it should look like.” He recognizes that changing mindsets is a difficult task, though, leading to arguments about “what’s a weed and what’s a flower?” Torgerson, who advised Anderson on his lawn makeover, emphasizes that it’s important for people to see good examples of xeriscaping in order for the practice to gain acceptance. Otherwise, people tend to dismiss it as unattractive: Torgerson notes that some detractors even call it “zeroscaping.”
|
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Critics of xeriscaping would have difficulty arguing that this flower-filled landscape, even without turf, is unattractive. |
In addition to neighbors’ perceptions, legal requirements may be another hurdle faced by would-be xeriscapers. Anderson knows this firsthand: His water-wise yard may technically be in violation of Salt Lake City’s landscape ordinance, which Duer declares is one of “the most convoluted and complicated of any municipality in the western United States.” According to both Anderson and Duer, the current language of the ordinance is unclear. Anderson is proposing a revision to the ordinance—the details of which Duer is hammering out with the city’s planning department—under which turf would not be required, and vegetation would not need to cover more than one-third of the front yard. According to Anderson, there is no organized opposition to the ordinance revision; when interviewed for this article, he expected the revision to pass easily by the end of 2006. (Dave Buhler, chair of the Salt Lake City Council, said it was hard for him to comment on the ordinance without having seen it but said the council was “looking forward to receiving it.”) Anderson also notes other efforts to promote xeriscaping, such as the three-tiered system of water rates the city implemented in order to reward conservation and to make heavy water users pay more. Duer has designed a demonstration garden at the city and county building and a native plant garden at the endearingly named Pork Chop Park, and she is planning more demonstration gardens in a variety of styles for locations all over the city, including the public utilities building, a library, and the Avenues, a historic neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
|
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Up to 65% of Utah's treated water is used on landscapes, many of them traditional turf yards like this example. |
Vlasic gives Salt Lake City credit for pioneering drought-tolerant landscaping, noting that the city has been “more progressive in promoting these ideas. Some of the outlying communities still haven’t made that leap.” But change is on the horizon, according to Rice. The district, which wholesales water to several cities in Salt Lake County (although not to Salt Lake City), developed a model landscape ordinance for its member agencies to use as a template that they could customize to fit the needs of their respective communities. “More residents are becoming educated” about xeriscaping, says Rice, and the growing awareness is forcing cities into action. He points to West Valley City, South Jordan, Draper, and Murray as member agencies that have all revised their landscaping ordinances and observes that the Salt Lake County Council is reviewing a proposed landscape ordinance that would apply to unincorporated areas.
Of course, it’s a little easier to fight City Hall when you’re the mayor, and Anderson’s bully pulpit has probably worked to his advantage. Alexandra Eframo has had a decidedly different experience. The Delta Airlines retiree has been fighting a running battle with officials in the city of West Jordan, a rapidly growing suburb in Salt Lake County, over her attempts at xeriscaping. Heeding official calls by the state to “slow the flow” during the drought, Eframo decided to turn off her sprinklers five years ago. “Stupid me,” she recounts. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with dry grass.” Her neighbors felt differently, however, and Eframo—who laughingly calls herself “the Rosa Parks of xeriscaping”—began racking up citations for zoning violations. According to her, one such citation actually ordered her to water her lawn. But Eframo had a different idea, and she began planting drought-tolerant flowers and shrubs instead. Facing misdemeanor charges and a maximum $700 fine or 90-day jail sentence, Eframo contested the citations in court, where she was represented by a retired judge working pro bono who argued that the city’s ordinance was unconstitutionally vague. The city’s case against Eframo was dismissed in May 2006.
|
Photo: Jordan Valley Water Conservation District |
| Not a cactus in sight: This garden demonstrates that a desert landscape can have abundant color and plant variety. |
Eframo’s experience seems to encapsulate many of the issues associated with xeriscaping: politics, aesthetics, and individual expression. Seeking some relief from what she calls harassment by West Jordan officials, Eframo contacted a Utah state senator, asking him to champion legislation at the state level to allow xeriscaping. Perhaps to avoid being drawn into the latest skirmish in the western water wars, he declined, saying—according to Eframo—that it was an issue for individual municipalities to regulate. So the indefatigable Eframo, recovering from recent surgery to implant a pacemaker, is determined to appear before the West Jordan City Council once she has regained her strength in order to persuade the city to change its landscaping ordinance. (Ironically, West Jordan—a Jordan Valley Water member agency—has already revised its ordinance in response to the Eframo case, using the water district’s model ordinance. Rice of Jordan Valley Water maintains that West Jordan’s ordinance doesn’t discourage water-wise landscaping, although he says it does require some turf grass.) Eframo speaks as if she is on a mission: “All my neighbors were wasting water [during the drought] like you wouldn’t believe. If I can encourage just a couple of people [to conserve water] .…”
Steve Stewart, who defended Eframo in court, thinks the complaints about Eframo’s landscaping are mostly related to aesthetics, noting that “traditionally, it’s expected that you have green grass.”
But Eframo chafes at the limitations of other people’s expectations: “Sure, my lawn doesn’t look like everybody else’s. Why not have something that’s a conversation piece?” Echoing the philosophy expressed by both Vlasic and Duer that drought-tolerant yards can be a means of personal expression, Eframo poses a rhetorical question as old as the American West itself: “Why should we have the city telling us what kind of lawn we should have?”