Waterwise Landscaping in Utah Valley: Lawns, Localscapes & Actually Saving Water

Abigail Giordano Senior Writer, Provo.com

Utah is one of the driest states in the country, and the second-highest per-capita water user in it. Those two facts sit uncomfortably together, and most of the gap is outdoor irrigation — lawns, in a valley that gets a small fraction of the rainfall lawns evolved for.

That's the case for changing how Utah Valley yards work. What follows is the practical version: what actually saves water, what the local water systems do that surprises newcomers, and how to get there without a yard that looks like a parking lot.

First, understand your water

Before touching a plant, understand what you're irrigating with. Utah Valley has two parallel systems and most residents are fuzzy on which one they're using.

Culinary water is treated drinking water. It comes out of your taps, and it's the expensive one.

Secondary water — also called pressurized irrigation — is untreated water delivered through a separate set of pipes purely for outdoor use. Large parts of Utah Valley are served by it. It's much cheaper, it runs seasonally (turned on in spring, shut off before freeze), and historically much of it was billed at a flat rate regardless of how much you used.

That flat-rate history matters, because it's the reason Utah Valley yards were watered the way they were for decades: there was no meter and no marginal cost, so the rational move was to water generously. That's changing. Secondary water metering has been rolling out across Utah, and the shift from flat-rate to measured use changes the incentives substantially — often dramatically reducing consumption once people can see the number.

Find out which system serves your property and whether it's metered. Your city or water provider can answer both. Our utilities guide for Provo covers the broader picture of how water, power, and the rest work here.

Localscapes: the Utah-specific approach

The most useful framework for waterwise landscaping in Utah isn't generic xeriscaping — it's Localscapes, developed specifically for this state's climate and promoted by Utah water conservancy districts.

Its central insight is that the problem isn't lawn itself. The problem is lawn as the default that covers everything by process of elimination. Localscapes reorganizes a yard into deliberate zones:

• A central open shape — lawn, sized to what you actually use it for. Kids, dogs, a place to sit. If nobody walks on the park strip, it doesn't need to be grass.
• Gathering areas — patios, fire pits, seating.
• Activity zones — gardens, play equipment, whatever the household actually does outside.
• Paths connecting them.
• Planting beds filling the rest with waterwise plants.

The result keeps usable lawn while eliminating the strips, corners, and slivers of turf that are watered for no reason. In practice this is where most of the savings live, and it's far more palatable to homeowners — and to HOAs — than "rip it all out."

The park strip, and why it's the obvious place to start

The strip between the sidewalk and the street is the worst-performing turf on any Utah property. It's narrow, so sprinklers overspray onto concrete. It's next to hot asphalt. Nobody uses it. It's frequently the hardest area to keep alive and the most wasteful to irrigate.

It's also the standard starting point for Utah's rebate programs, several of which have been organized around park-strip conversion specifically. Converting a park strip is a weekend-scale project rather than a whole-yard renovation, the water savings are disproportionate to the area, and it's visible from the street — which, in a valley where landscaping norms are strongly influenced by what the neighbors do, matters more than it should.

On rebates: Utah has run turf-removal and landscape rebate programs through statewide and district-level water conservation efforts. Amounts, eligibility rules, and funding availability change year to year, and programs can exhaust their budgets mid-season. Nearly all of them require pre-approval before you remove anything — tearing out the lawn first and applying afterward is the classic way to disqualify yourself. Check current program status with Utah Water Savers and your own water provider before you start.

Plants that actually survive here

Utah Valley's climate demands a specific combination: drought tolerance and cold hardiness. A great deal of what's marketed as drought-tolerant landscaping is designed for Phoenix or Southern California and will not survive a Utah Valley January.

Reliable categories:

• Utah and Intermountain natives — rabbitbrush, penstemon, blanketflower, Utah serviceberry, and the various sagebrushes. Adapted to exactly this precipitation and these temperature swings.
• Ornamental grasses — blue grama, little bluestem, feather reed grass. Movement, winter structure, minimal water.
• Adapted perennials — yarrow, Russian sage, catmint, lavender in the right spot, sedums.
• Evergreens — junipers, pinyon, and mugo pine give year-round structure, which matters in a valley with a long brown season.
• Waterwise turf alternatives — where you want a ground plane but not conventional lawn, options like buffalograss and fine fescue blends use significantly less water than Kentucky bluegrass.

Soil is the step people skip. Much of the valley has heavy clay or alkaline soil, and amending it before planting does more for plant survival than almost anything you do afterward. Utah State University Extension publishes region-specific guidance, and local nurseries know the microclimates — the north end of the valley, the benches, and the lakeshore are not the same growing environment.

Irrigation: where the savings really are

You can install perfect plants and still waste enormous amounts of water on a bad irrigation setup. The unglamorous truth is that fixing irrigation usually saves more water than changing plants.

• Drip for beds, spray for turf. Overhead spray on planting beds loses water to evaporation and wind, and Utah Valley is windy.
• Fix the overspray. Water landing on sidewalks and streets is pure loss and it's the most common problem in the valley. Walk your system while it's running — most people never have.
• Water deeply and less often. Frequent shallow watering trains shallow roots. Longer, less frequent cycles build drought resilience.
• Water at night or early morning. Midday irrigation in a dry, windy valley loses a large share to evaporation before it reaches the root zone.
• Cycle and soak. On clay soil and slopes, water runs off before it absorbs. Splitting a run into shorter cycles with soak time between them dramatically improves what actually reaches the roots.
• Adjust seasonally. The single most common waste is running a July schedule in September. Smart controllers automate this; a calendar reminder does most of the same job for free.

Working with a landscape contractor

Utah does not have a single statewide "landscaper" license covering basic installation and maintenance, but licensing requirements do apply once work crosses into construction — retaining walls, hardscape, irrigation system installation, drainage, and similar. Pesticide application is separately regulated.

That means the vetting question here is specifically: does the license classification cover the work in my scope? A crew that mows lawns is not necessarily licensed to build the retaining wall in your design. Our guide to hiring home pros in Utah Valley walks through the DOPL lookup and the rest of the process.

Also: book in winter. Good landscape crews in this valley fill their spring calendar months ahead, and the conversation that happens in January gets a better result than the one that happens in May.

Realistic expectations

A few honest notes, because waterwise landscaping is often oversold.

It isn't zero maintenance. It's different maintenance — less mowing, more weeding in the first couple of years while plants establish. Weeds love newly disturbed soil.

Establishment takes water. New plantings need regular irrigation for the first season or two, sometimes more than the lawn they replaced. The savings arrive in year three, not year one.

It won't look finished immediately. Perennials and shrubs need a few seasons to fill in. The photographs in rebate program brochures are mature landscapes. Plant with the mature size in mind and accept some bare ground in the meantime, or you'll overplant and pay for it later.

Check your HOA. Many Utah Valley subdivisions have landscaping covenants, and while state law has moved toward protecting waterwise landscaping choices, the practical path is still smoother when you ask first.

Where to start this week

If you want one action rather than a project: walk your irrigation while it's running. Look for spray hitting concrete, broken heads, and zones running longer than they need to. That single hour is the highest-return water conservation available to most Utah Valley households, and it costs nothing.

Then, when you're ready for the bigger version, start with the park strip.

Trees deserve their own plan

The most common serious mistake in waterwise conversions is treating trees like everything else.

Mature trees are the most valuable thing in most yards — shade that reduces cooling costs, property value, habitat, and decades of growth you cannot buy back. In a hot, dry valley, shade is not decorative.

They're also the most vulnerable to a lawn conversion, because established trees in a turf yard have been drinking the lawn's irrigation for years. Remove the turf, remove the sprinklers, and the tree slowly declines — often two or three years later, when nobody connects it to the landscaping project.

The fix is straightforward: keep irrigating trees deliberately, with deep, infrequent watering out at the drip line rather than at the trunk. Drip lines or bubblers sized for trees do this efficiently.

Don't pile mulch against the trunk. The volcano of mulch you see everywhere holds moisture against bark and invites rot and rodents. The rodent here is usually the vole, which travels under cover and will girdle a young tree at the base over winter — our pest control guide covers that, and the trunk guards that prevent it. Mulch wide and shallow, pulled back from the trunk.

Plant new trees anyway. A waterwise yard with good trees uses less water overall than a turf yard, and the shade reduces the water demand of everything under it.

Doing it in phases

A whole-yard conversion is expensive and disruptive, which is why so many stall halfway and stay ugly for years. Phasing works better.

Year one: the park strip. Highest waste, lowest risk, most likely to qualify for a rebate, and it teaches you what grows well on your particular soil.

Year two: the worst-performing zone. The strip along the south fence that always burns out, the narrow side yard nobody uses, the slope that sheds water into the gutter.

Year three: irrigation overhaul and the remaining beds.

Keep the lawn you actually use throughout. This is the part that makes phasing sustainable — you're not living in a construction site, and each phase looks finished on its own.

Rebate programs, eligibility rules, and water restrictions change frequently and vary by provider. Verify current programs with Utah Water Savers and your local water provider before beginning work.

Abigail Giordano

Senior Writer

Abigail Giordano is a senior writer at Provo.com covering student life, family resources, and community events across Utah Valley. Her writing focuses on making Provo more accessible and navigable for newcomers, students, and families — the practical guides that help people feel at home faster.