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Utah water managers have urged residents to delay turning on sprinklers and drip systems this spring as the state heads into another hot, dry summer that is expected to bring worsening conditions along the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River.

As irrigation season ramps up, though, experts say water-wise landscaping can reduce water use without sacrificing trees, pollinator habitat or curb appeal.

“We hear all the time, ‘I’m gonna zero-scape,’” said Katie Wagner, a horticulture expert with the Utah State University Extension. “It’s not ‘zero’ scape, xeriscape … dry landscaping, which goes beyond just putting down rock.”

Here are tips for reducing how much water you use at home. While some apply specifically to homeowners associations, or HOAs, experts say there are options for anyone rethinking their yard during the drought.

Water-wise rules for residents in HOAs

In my time covering water issues in the state over the last decade-plus, I remember cases of dust-ups and spats nearly every dry summer where a homeowner would attempt to rip out turf and get blocked by an HOA. Those days are gone, thanks to water wise landscaping provisions added in recent years to state code governing HOAs.

“There are thousands of HOAs in Utah, a lot of them run by volunteers,” said Trever Midgley of HOA Solutions, a management company. “They don’t always stay up-to-date on the laws and what’s required of them.”

Under state law, HOAs now cannot ban xeric landscaping, require turf in areas eight feet wide or less, or demand sustained high water use during drought.

Regardless of what an HOA’s governing documents say, nothing allows an association to tell a homeowner what they can do with their backyard, even if it’s viewable from a street or sidewalk, Midgley said.

What an HOA can do is adopt bylaws that designate a water-wise landscape’s appearance. They can require certain plantings and prohibit members from turning park strips into a pile of bare gravel, and they can ban things like artificial turf.

The state required community associations to develop water-wise landscaping regulations in 2024 that any resident in an HOA can access and follow.

“What we find, even with our own clients,” Midgley said, “is that a lot of communities never adopted the rules, never undertook that effort of what we’re going to allow, what we’re not going to allow.”

Getting those rules on the books can often be a resident-driven effort, Midgley added, empowering property owners to set standards for their neighborhood. Condo and townhome owners within HOAs who don’t have their own yards and lawns can champion more drought-friendly modifications for communal spaces as well, like installing smart controllers and ensuring sprinklers don’t run during rainstorms.

“Go to the board, volunteer, initiate change,” Mildly said, “try to educate.”

The case for vegetation, even during drought

Even in extremely dry and hot conditions, maintaining plants on landscapes provides environmental benefits, Wagner said. Turf, too, plays a role protecting soils, holding moisture and reducing urban heat-island effects.

“Unfortunately, there’s also a myth that the only way to keep turf from going brown is to put down enough water and sometimes fertilizer too,” Wagner said.

In reality, it’s often heat that turns traditional Kentucky bluegrass brown. Temperatures above 80 degrees will trigger it to go dormant. Homeowners try to counteract this natural response by overwatering, worrying natural brown patches mean the turf has died.

“Turf is a very tough, extremely tough landscape plant,” Wagner said. “We’ve done research trials … with USU and found [with] as little as a quarter inch of water a month, the turf will survive.”

For those who can’t bear brown patches, USU has researched turf hybrids that are better suited to Utah’s hot and dry summers, staying green longer through the season. Grasses developed by the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance, a USU partner, are available at big-box home improvement stores and certain sod farms.

“If you don’t want to get rid of your grass, or your HOA says you have to have a certain amount, there’s no reason why you can’t transition,” Wagner said.

For those who still want to remove large swaths of their lawns, Wagner recommends other groundcovers that can handle heat rather than bare mulch and gravel. She likes low-grow oregano and creeping Oregon grape. And she supports turf mixed with other low-water groundcovers, like clover and yarrow, that have become trendy.

“Some people think it looks weedy, some think it looks cool,” Wagner said.

A common mistake when property owners rip out turf entirely and install water-wise landscaping, Wagner said, is neglecting the water needs of existing shrubs and trees. Mature plants provide shade and habitat for birds and other wildlife. Low-flow drip emitters aren’t enough to meet the needs of large woody vegetation.

“The top planting material we recommend protecting in times of drought, that you should purposely water, is mature trees and shrubs,” Wagner said. “Turf is last.”

Given Utah’s rough water outlook this season, Wagner also encourages residents to hold off adding new perennials or lawns until the fall, when temperatures drop and rainfall (hopefully) returns.

“Any new planting is going to take more water to try to maintain it,” she said, “and … we’re going to get hot here very quickly.”

USU Extension and the Jordan Valley Conservation Garden Park co-host a monthly online webinar called the “Urban Conserver” with more tips on maintaining a low-water landscape. The classes are free and have proven popular, Wagner said.