Fall is a good time to think about creating a new ColoradoScape around your home next year, starting with an area of decorative Kentucky bluegrass that you only visit to mow or water.
Over the summer, Denver Water used that approach to tackle the landscape around our Einfeldt pump station near the University of Denver.
We are transforming about 13,000 square feet — formerly filled with useless, water-intensive Kentucky bluegrass — into a diverse ColoradoScape that incorporates water-wise plants, prairie grasses and cooling shade trees, while also offering a rich habitat for birds, pollinators and wildlife that live in the metro area.
The work is being done with help from a Transformative Landscape Change Challenge grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board and working with Boulder nonprofit Resource Central.
Once the plants are established, we expect to reduce water use at this site by nearly 183,000 gallons of water a year.