What a xeriscape renovation actually requires
Lawn removal, soil, plants, and a separate drip zone for a Front Range yard. A sequence and a materials list, not a gravel estimate.
A xeriscape conversion fails when it is a weekend of spray and gravel. Denver Water coined the word in 1981 and still describes seven practices: plan and design, soil amendment, efficient irrigation, mulch, plant zones, alternative turf grasses, and maintenance.
Gravel is a mulch, and only one of the seven. The yard that saves water is the yard that still has plants, grouped by how much water they want, on valves that can tell them apart.
This page is the order of work and the quantities to price. The plant lists are on the Front Range, Wasatch, high plains, and northern New Mexico pages. The design sequence is on the xeriscape page.
Start with the drawing, not the sod cutter
Measure the lawn you will keep. It should be a simple shape a sprinkler can hit without watering the sidewalk, in sun if you hope to use buffalo grass or blue grama.
Everything else is a candidate to come out. A skinny side yard, a hellstrip, and the slope you never sit on are the first places to stop mowing. Draw the hose bibs and the existing valves.
If one valve waters the lawn and the shrubs, the renovation includes splitting that valve or accepting that you will hand-water the new beds forever.
Hand-watering works for a small bed. It does not work for a whole parkway you will ignore in August.
Denver Water’s soil note is practical: many Front Range soils are clay or sand, and for most soils, 1 to 2 inches of organic material worked into the top 6 inches is the improvement.
Native plants often do not want a rich, manure-heavy bed. The vegetable garden does. Do not compost the entire property as if it were a tomato bed.
Amend where you are planting things that need it. Test before you add sulfur or gypsum. That test is the alkaline soil page.
The sequence that does not have to be redone
Kill or strip the grass you are removing. Seed or plugs of buffalo grass will not win against a living bluegrass lawn. Dig out the turf, or use a method you will actually finish, and get the roots.
Then amend the planting beds, then lay irrigation, then plant, then mulch. Irrigation under the plants is miserable to add later. Plants before irrigation means you trample the new drip line or you skip it.
Fall is a kinder time to plant perennials and shrubs along the Front Range than the first week of July, because roots can grow in cool soil before the next dry wind. You still water them. “Drought tolerant” starts after the first one or two summers. A July conversion with no water on the new plants is a conversion you will do twice.
A materials list for a modest front yard
Say the piece coming out is 400 square feet, a typical hellstrip plus a bit of lawn beside the walk. Adjust the multiples. These are quantities, not a bid.
| Material | For about 400 square feet converted | How to scale |
|---|---|---|
| Turf removed | 400 square feet | Haul it. A pile of dead sod is not a compost plan if it is full of bindweed. |
| Compost worked into beds, not the whole area | 1 to 2 inches over the planting beds only | Denver Water’s figure. Beds might be half the area. Half of 400 square feet, 1.5 inches deep, is about 25 cubic feet, under 1 cubic yard. |
| Plants | Enough to cover without packing them at nursery spacing | Buy for mature width. Overplanting makes a wet nursery, not a xeriscape. |
| Wood-chip mulch for shrub beds | 2 to 4 inches | 200 square feet at 3 inches is about 50 cubic feet, roughly 2 cubic yards. |
| Gravel mulch only where the plants want drainage | 2 inches, not wall to wall | Denver Water warns rock on the south or west next to the house holds heat. |
| Drip for the new beds, separate from turf | Filter, regulator, line to the beds | The parts list. |
| Buffalo grass or blue grama seed or plugs, if a lawn remains in full sun | The remaining panel only | Warm-season seed goes into warm soil, not a cold April. The lawn page has the limits. |
Mulch depth is where the ticket hides. A thin cosmetic layer blows away or lets weeds through. Denver Water’s mulch guidance says organic mulch at least about 4 inches in many of their materials, and the practical garden range on this site is 2 to 4 inches of chips that will knit in the wind.
Price the cubic yards, not a single bag. One bag covers a planter. A parkway eats a yard.
What not to buy
Landscape fabric under a perennial bed you intend to dig. It becomes a mess and a weed mat of its own once dust settles on it.
Fabric under a permanent path is a fair tool. Black plastic under mulch blocks air and water. Denver Water says not to use it.
A single yucca and a truck of rock. That is the look that gave the word a bad name. It also radiates heat into the south wall.
If you want gravel, use it as a path and as a narrow mulch for plants that rot in chips, such as some ice plants and penstemons.
Say what the ice plant is. It is not a Front Range native. The plant page labels origin.
An irrigation controller with twelve zones for a yard that has two. One turf zone, if you keep turf, and one drip zone for the new beds, is a finished first renovation. Add a third later for trees that need a deep soak on a different rhythm from the lettuce.
Trees in a new xeriscape still need water for two or three summers. The tree page is the planting hole. Do not set a bur oak in a gravel pit and walk away in June.
Maintenance is a cost
The seventh principle is the one that keeps the water savings. Weeds will grow in the mulch because the wind delivers seed. Budget an hour, not a service contract you will resent, and pull them small.
Check emitters in June. Replenish chips when the wind has thinned them. A yard that is “done” and ignored for three years is weeds in gravel, which is neither beautiful nor cheap to undo.
If a rebate from your water provider requires a plan, a plant list, or a certain square footage of turf removed, read that program before you dig.
This page is not the rebate. The utility’s current form is the rebate. Denver Water’s principles page is the design standard. Your city’s program may be stricter.
Checklist
- Draw the lawn you will keep, in a shape you can spray, in sun if it is buffalo grass or blue grama.
- Remove turf completely before you seed a native lawn into it.
- Amend planting beds with about 1 to 2 inches of organic matter in the top 6 inches. Do not manure the whole lot.
- Lay drip before you plant. Keep it off the turf valve.
- Mulch in cubic yards, 2 to 4 inches, with chips where the wind would take straw.
- Use gravel as a path and a drainage mulch, not as the design.
- Water new plants the first summers. Then back off.
- Price haul-away, delivery, and the regulator. They are part of the job.
Sources
- Denver Water, Xeriscape principles, including soil improvement of about 1 to 2 inches of organic material and the warning on rock and heat.
- Denver Water, Water Wise Landscape Handbook, the seven principles and the 1981 coinage.
- CSU Extension, Native Grasses for Use in Colorado Landscapes, blue grama to about 9,500 feet in the fact sheet’s table, low water, not a shade grass.
- Colorado State Archives, blue grama adopted as the state grass in 1987.