Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Reimagining our thirsty yards amid an effort to ban some turf in Las Vegas

Desert Landscaping

Steve Marcus

Professor M.L. Robinson looks over the Butterfly Pavilion at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Garden, 8050 Paradise Road, April 29, 2021.

Desert Landscaping

Professor M. L. Robinson holds a blossom from a Japanese pomegranate tree at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Garden, 8050 Paradise Rd., Thursday, April 29, 2021. Launch slideshow »

A desert yard doesn’t need to just be cacti atop coarse pebbles, but it definitely doesn’t have to be green turf, either.

An inviting drought-tolerant yard can be lush with the showy purple blooms of chives and wild bergamot, wrapped in the warm woodsy scent of a bay laurel shade tree. It can even have an oasis of roses, which, because they require partial shade, also require less water than plants growing thirstily in full blazing sun.

“Xeriscaping,” says UNR professor and horticulturist M.L. Robinson, “is more than rocks and low-volume irrigation.”

As the Nevada Legislature considers a first-in-the-nation ban on ornamental grass in Las Vegas, homeowners will consider doing their part by reimagining water-guzzling grass yards. 

Under the proposal, backed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, sports fields, golf courses, parks and residential yards would be spared, but decorative “nonfunctional turf” in spaces like road medians and commercial parking lots would have to go by the end of 2026. 

This grass that nobody uses or walks on covers roughly 5,000 acres, or 8 square miles, combined throughout the valley, according to the water authority. Converting this turf to hardy desert-adapted landscaping with drip irrigation could save up to 12 billion gallons of water annually, returning more than 10% of Nevada’s yearly Colorado River allotment.

Nonetheless, patches here and there can add up. The gardens where Robinson and colleagues at UNR’s cooperative extension ply their research in Las Vegas, a diverse 3-acre botanical haven off the 215 Beltway, are open to the public and offer plenty of inspiration. 

For a water-wise home garden, consider multipurpose plants. It doesn’t all have to be ornamental. 

Hops vines can twine elegantly around a trellis and yield cones that make a relaxing foot soak and tea, if not beer. The shoots are also edible.

“You can eat the new shoots when they come out in the spring,” Robinson says. “Egyptians did.”

An herb garden is green, smells good and yields crops for medicinal and culinary consumption: rosemary, sage, beebalm, thyme, oregano, marjoram, those chives and bergamot. This herb garden can be what Robinson calls a “farmacy.”

“We all should have a farmacy of herbs in our garden that we can cook with, heal with, all these wonderful things, if you’re into them — which you should be,” he says.

Want similar benefits in tree form, also providing shade? Vitex, mulberry and pomegranate bear flower and fruit. The yaupon holly shrub, though native to the southeastern U.S., can do well in Vegas, reach a tree’s height, and grow berries that make a caffeinated tea.

Plan for critters like birds, butterflies, bees and smaller insects that will be drawn to your yard.

Las Vegas landscaper Carlos Macias agrees that happy bees make a more beautiful garden, pollinating as they do.

About three-quarters of the customers of his landscaping firm, CM Grow Green, call him to maintain their traditional green grass, but the balance that favors the desert look is growing, with water authority rebates encouraging conversions.

He encourages flowering lantanas, sage, cassia and mountain laurel, which in bloom are far from stark. He has cassia and sage in his own yard.

“You can go full lush, when really there’s very little water being dispersed,” he says. 

That’s ever more important when the Vegas region is coming off one of the driest years in history. The city went a record 240 days — eight months — without measurable rainfall. The Colorado River accounts for 90% of the region’s water, and levels at Lake Mead continue to drop. 

“When we have grass in medians of parking lots, or grass bordering parking lots for grocery stores, that’s not grass that anybody is going to use,” said Bronson Mack, a spokesman for the water authority. “It’s grass that’s only going to drink our water resources.”

Robinson’s fellow water conservation experts expand on the scientific reasons.

Water used indoors is captured, recycled and sent back to Lake Mead. But grass loses water to the atmosphere through something like botanical perspiration that cannot be captured.

Lynn Fenstermaker, a research professor in biology at Vegas’ Desert Research Institute, explains that during the photosynthesis process — when plants use light and carbon dioxide from the air to produce sugars and starches for growth — plants also transpire water. This is akin to sweating in humans.

When carbon dioxide enters the plant through pores called stomates, the plants simultaneously lose water. The water converts to gas in the air, a process called latent heat of vaporization, and that requires energy that produces a slight cooling effect. (Want to know if a plant is actively transpiring? Touch the leaves and feel if they’re cooler than the surrounding air.)

In the desert, especially during the hot months, the driving force for plant transpiration is always high, thanks to the combination of heat and low relative humidity. Most plants will require “a fair amount” of irrigated water, especially plants not adapted to the desert — and more especially lawns, Fenstermaker says.

“Although live grass can help ‘cool’ the surrounding environment, it does so at the cost of water use,” she says.

Dale Devitt, a life sciences professor at UNLV, says prolonged drought has forced arid cities like Las Vegas to address water conservation from multiple perspectives.

“Focusing water conservation on urban landscapes simply makes sense,” says Devitt, who is director of UNLV’s Center for Urban Water Conservation. “Reducing the size of landscapes, altering their composition and improving irrigation efficiencies should be the focus of all landscape water conservation programs, such as programs implemented by SNWA.”