“If you make it easy to conserve water, they will do it,” he said. “If you make it really difficult, then they will come back to it when they have time. That is the reason that so many people continue with their current landscaping year after year. It takes time to make changes.”
Tag: Water and urban landscapes
A five-part series written and reported by Allen Best, publisher of Big Pivots, in collaboration with Aspen Journalism, examining evolving norms in how Colorado uses water in urban landscapes. This shift will likely never be absolute, but the dominance of Kentucky bluegrass and other thirsty cool-weather grasses as the default landscapes of homes and businesses has started to fade. Why now? What are the catalysts? And exactly how far will this go?
Best’s reporting on this topic took him from headwaters communities on the Western Slope that have started rethinking their use of water for landscaping, to the suburban and exurban expanse of the Front Range, where cities face existential questions about growth and sustainability. Water is the fundamental issue here. This is a story found in virtually every town and city in Colorado.
Posted inWater
How bluegrass lawns became the default for homeowners associations
Pollan and other writers have traced our modern idea of a lawn to the early 17th century. In at least one telling, aristocrats wanted clearings around their castles for defensive purposes. They either had animals graze it or dispatched servants with scythes to keep the grasses low.
Posted inWater
At Colorado River’s headwaters, questions about whether there’s enough water for lawns
“It’s not about drought years,” says Eagle River Water and Sanitation District’s general manager. “It’s about a drying climate. We have to get people to shift their attitudes, to know that water is getting to be more scarce.”
Posted inWater
Colorado squeezing water from urban landscapes
Like weekly haircuts for men, a regularly mowed lawn of Kentucky bluegrass was long a prerequisite for civic respectability in Colorado’s towns and cities. That expectation has begun shifting.