Spring is time when people think more seriously about their yards. Some gaze at their lawn and lament that even with meticulous care and excessive amounts of water, it will never roll forth like a luxurious carpet of green.

That’s because we don’t live in Kentucky. And most lawns in the Salt Lake Valley are Kentucky bluegrass.

Kentucky bluegrass wants to go dormant at about 80 degrees, so Utah’s spring and fall seasons are lovely. But over that temperature (most of the summer) we’re forced to water the lawn more often to cool things off, to fool it into thinking it’s a shoulder season. Bluegrass doesn't want to be in Salt Lake in the summer.

So, if bluegrass doesn’t grow well in in the valley, why is it so ubiquitous? 

“Initially, lawns were a symbol of wealth and the American dream of home ownership,” Daryl Lindsey, a local landscape architect, told Doug Fabrizio on a recent episode of KUER’s RadioWest. 

“I think it started with modern suburban development in Levittown, Long Island. After World War II, a developer had a group of new houses that needed something quick and green in front. The trend grew from there,” Lindsey continued. “Kentucky bluegrass is inexpensive to install, and developers can roll it out, dust their hands and say, ‘good luck maintaining this.’”

Of course, there’s a place for lawn. It’s great for sports, walking dogs and picnicking. But Utah has a lot of lazy lawn, which is a drain on our water resources and is hard to keep green. There’s an alternative.

Not even five years ago, Lindsey started making videos about her backyard vegetable garden. “Squash and tomatoes became my entire personality,” Lindsey said with a laugh. “You could say I came about gardening and landscaping very organically.” 

After her content went viral, she figured she might have found a niche market and started her company Yardfarmer.co. On her wildly popular platforms, she provides gardening and landscaping tips. She also creates personalized landscape plans to help clients switch to native plants and create drought-tolerant, sustainable yards. 

These days, Yardfarmer.co employs a team of eight, including herself and her husband Steven Schmidt. Lindsey was born in Long Island, New York and her husband is from Germany, but the two met at the University of Utah. They moved to Murray in 2016. 

Start with your park strip

This article will focus on some of Lindsey’s suggestions for park strips because strips are most often “lazy.” Plus, they are inefficient strips of grass. Eight feet is the minimum for conventional sprinklers to water efficiently and not spray onto pavement. 

If you’re daunted by the prospect of changing your landscape, it is much easier to tackle a small square footage landscape conversion. Extra benefit: there are many rebates available to help pay for the changes (varying from city to city).

Flipping your strip isn’t just about digging out the grass and replacing it with rock and gravel, either. Weeds love gravel and rocks are hot. The goal is to mimic nature, so think prairie.

You also don’t need to spend a whole season with plastic on your lawn. Depending on the size of your strip, it could be a weekend of work with a big payoff.

Steps for planting

1) Check with your city for rebates. You’ll need to qualify for the rebate before the conversion to get money back, so don’t dig before you qualify. 

2) Dig out the grass. You’ll need the volume removed to add plants and organic material, so things don’t spill onto the sidewalk. 

3) Convert your sprinklers to drip line. There are many YouTube tutorials available for this step. 

4) Now for the fun. If the strip requires a path from the street, determine where most visitors and street parkers will walk. Use pavers to create an obvious and easily accessible path for foot traffic. 

5) If there is not already a tree in your strip, search for trees that are available for park strips in your city. Each city typically has a list of several you can purchase directly from the city for cheap, and they will even plant them for you. 

6) Select some decorative native grasses. The Salt Lake Valley is a high-elevation desert. Think of your park strip as a pocket-prairie, and drought tolerant grasses love the climate. Typically, most cities want plants under 24-inches tall, which rules out some grasses and makes the decision easier. Lindsey recommends blue gramma and Idaho blue fescue grasses, both decorative and native. 

7) Give it a pop of color with a few flowering perennials. Lindsey threw out a few that work nicely in the valley: Wasatch penstemon, silvery lupin, asters and scarlet globe mallows.

8) Choose a low-growing native groundcover for the gaps. Bark mulch is fine to fill in until the groundcover covers the space. But do not use weed mat or fabric. It stops the nutrient transfer of the plants and makes it hard for the mulching plants to take hold. Weeds have shallow roots, so the mat will actually encourage weed growth after a season or two. For groundcover, Lindsey recommends blue mat penstemon, kinnikinnick, or a low-growing Yaak yarrow.

9) Lastly, give it a couple of years to fill in. 

Where to buy native plants

While you can find native plants at most nurseries, Lindsey says a nice selection can be found at 42nd Street Greenhouse in Murray, Growing Empire, Twin Pines Nursery and Cache Valley Native plants (who delivers locally).

“Up to 60% of potable water goes to outdoor irrigation,” Lindsey said. “So, while a strip is a small parcel of a person’s yard, collectively it’s not a small thing. Millions and millions of gallons of water can be saved.” 

Social Media Links: 

www.tiktok.com/@yardfarmer.co 

www.youtube.com/@yardfarmerco 

www.instagram.com/yardfarmer.co