The city of Bend recently launched a program that offers rebates to homeowners who give up their grass lawns in favor of native plants and low-water landscaping. It’s part of the city’s efforts to reduce its water usage by 7.9 billion gallons by 2040. The program is so popular that it maxed out its funding in a matter of weeks and is no longer taking new applications.
Dan Denning is the water conservation program manager for the city of Bend. Rick Martinson is the founder and director of the High Desert Horticultural Center. They join us to talk about the new program and the increasing demand for more sustainable landscaping.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. “Cash for Grass,” that’s a nickname for the program that the city of Bend launched recently. It provides rebates to residents who give up their grass lawns in favor of native plants and other low-water landscaping. It’s part of the city’s efforts to reduce water usage by about 8 billion gallons in the next 15 years. The program was so popular that it maxed out its funding in a matter of weeks. There is now a waiting list for the next round. Dan Denning is the water conservation program manager for the city of Bend. Rick Martinson is the founder and director of the High Desert Horticultural Center. They both join me now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Dan Denning: Thank you.
Rick Martinson: Thanks, welcome.
Miller: Dan, let’s start with the context here. What are the city of Bend’s current goals, in terms of reducing the use of water?
Denning: Well, Dave, about every 10 years, we do a water master plan and a water management conservation plan, looking at the horizon and the future of our water resources, our population growth, and other factors. Our goals were set based on what those numbers told us, that our population continues to grow, Bend continues to be a popular destination to land and to live and work and play. And as we see our demands increasing over the next 20 years and our water rights remaining the same, then seeing outside environmental factors of climate change and things influencing those water rights, we’re taking our goal of that 8 billion gallon reduction very seriously. So we’re doubling down on different strategies in order to meet that goal.
Miller: What role might residential lawns play in that reduction?
Denning: Well, huge. Historically, that had been the go-to, quintessential American landscape, with the green lawn, people mowing on the weekends and not really worrying about what implications that has on our water resources or water quality, etc. Here in the city of Bend, 60% of our water is used outdoors in the landscape. And historically, a similar number, about 60% of our landscapes have been comprised of turf, heavily landscaped with turf and minority shrubs or low water use planting. So what we see is probably double the amount of water applied to these lawns than the plant-water needs for various reasons, that could be irrigation efficiency or just management. But regardless, there’s a lot of opportunity for conservation savings there.
Miller: I want to make sure I understand. So not only is grass-standard turf way thirstier than native plants, but the way people in general water them, they put way more than even thirsty plants need?
Denning: Yeah, and that’s just due to our expectations of that plant. Turf does provide ecosystem benefits, a cooling effect, a place for recreation, but what we’re really looking at with this program is reducing the amount of nonfunctional or underutilized turf because of that resource dependence. Parks and schools are appropriate places for having natural turf lawns. But maybe not in that street strip or in front of every single home, just as a default.
Miller: Rick Martinson, I’m curious, what goes through your mind … let’s imagine it’s a July day or maybe even just a May day. You’re just in some residential neighborhood in Bend and you see an irrigation system set up for a big green lawn or a sprinkler or a homeowner with a hose. What goes through your mind?
Martinson: That’s a good question. Like Dan was saying, there are places where turf and sod are appropriate, but they’re generally overused in landscapes, especially in the western US. So what goes through my mind is kind of a waste of resources, a wasted opportunity to actually increase the diversity of species and the biodiversity while reducing resource dependency. And basically loss of an opportunity to make a really beautiful landscape that’s highly efficient.
Miller: How much do you think this is an aesthetic choice, as opposed to – a lack of imagination seems maybe too strong – but just a failure to think outside some 1950′s suburban ideal?
Martinson: Exactly. The American Lawn Association did a really good job marketing lawns to the American public back in the ‘40′s and 50′s. And that’s the aesthetic that people have in their minds. They think of urban landscapes and they think of lawn, foundation plantings and landscapes that require a good amount of maintenance. So it’s hard to get people to shift that paradigm and it’s not a big shift. It’s just a little tweak in how people are perceiving their landscapes.
So I think aesthetically, people, our culture, has learned to appreciate that lawn, and there’s a long history behind that. But people need to shift that aesthetic and put more value into the incredible diversity of plant material that’s available for them that creates beauty, that satisfies that aesthetic value, while saving water and other resources,
Miller: I have to say, as we’re having this conversation, I’m staring through many different layers of windows in the studio and the control room, to a grassy berm which abuts SW Macadam, which is a state highway. And there’s a big grassy area where no one’s going to play but people mow it and take care of it, and it’s almost invisible to my urban eyes. I’m so used to seeing them. When you start talking about it, I guess that’s when you pay more attention to the grass around you.
Dan, let’s go back to the program that the city of Bend set up. Can you explain how the turf removal rebate works?
Denning: Sure. Any city of Bend water customer is eligible to apply. We are looking for that next drop of water savings, or that next drop of saved water. So we’re only allowing people with existing lawns or living turf to apply, but essentially what will happen is, once we receive your application, we’re asking you to think through the process.
This really is a holistic approach of starting with the soil, building soil health so that we have resilient and thriving landscapes. Oftentimes, in developments, we see very limiting urban soils, through compaction and other construction processes. So we provide all the resources for folks to go step-by-step, and look at what it takes. Calling for “locates” so we don’t hit utility lines, building that soil, as I mentioned, picking regionally appropriate plant material and matching those hydrozones or those plant water needs of the plants we pick. So we ask people to just provide a little sketch of their project. And some of these, we get CAD [Computer Aided Design] drawings from professional landscapers submitting them, but that’s not necessary. Something hand drawn is just fine. We just want to make sure that people are thinking through their project.
And once we receive your application, we come out and do an hour consultation with you, just to walk through the process and make sure that your project would qualify. And then you get your notice to proceed. And so we give them 90 days with a 30-day extension if they need it, to get the project done and we’ll come back out and walk through the completed project with the customer, and they’ll get paid their $3 per square foot.
Miller: Rick Martinson, the phrase that I see a lot here is “xeriscaping.” What does that mean?
Martinson: Well, that was an idea developed, or a concept developed by the Denver Botanical Garden back, I think, in the late ‘70′s. And xeriscaping is essentially a design process where you’re grouping plants by water requirement. In the classic xeriscape there’s a series of concentric rings and each of those rings has a different water requirement. The closer to the house is higher water, as you move out from the residence, it gets lower water use. That’s a concept that applies well to native landscaping and water conservation.
When we were designing and constructing landscapes for the last 20 years, people would talk to us about xeriscaping and that idea. I would refer to what we were doing as xeriscaping on steroids because, like Dan was just talking about hydrozones, you’re working with hydrozones and different plant-water requirements. But with native landscapes, you can take that to the next level of work with plant associations or plant communities that are self supporting … this kind of gets in the weeds, but have the ability to support themselves through various structural components of that landscape. So it’s the spatial distribution of the plants. It’s the species composition, it’s the soil health and the soil type, it’s all sorts of different things. Xeriscaping is a concept that a lot of people talk about without really understanding what that is or how you can take that concept to really improve on that whole idea.
Miller: You’ve been in the nursery business for close to 30 years, if I’m not mistaken. How has the desire for this version of landscaping, the awareness of this philosophy, changed over the decades?
Martinson: Exponentially. When I started the business back about 25 years ago, we had a few customers that were interested in native plants and the ecology-based work, and it’s kind of in my history. But nobody had any money at that time and it was kind of a fringe industry. I would design projects and people would say, “Well, I don’t have any money, but I can give you a chicken,” that sort of thing. Now, just two decades later, it’s become much more mainstream, and people’s interest and knowledge of what is possible has just grown exponentially. It’s a huge part of the market now. We can’t keep up with the market, either in plant materials, sales at the nursery, or in the design.
One interesting thing that Dan was talking about with this rebate program for the city of Bend – we get quite a few customers that come into the nursery that are not eligible for that. Either they’re outside the city or on a different water purveyor or they just missed the application. They’re on the waiting list but they still want to complete that process. They still want to remove their lawn and plant with natives. So we’re working with a lot of people that aren’t in that program but still moving that direction.
Miller: Dan, why do you think this program has been so popular?
Denning: I think lots of reasons. I think, more and more, the topic of water in the West, but especially in the Deschutes Basin and in the Bend area, has become more and more prevalent. We’ve had five consecutive years of drought. People are seeing the growth happen, they’re seeing Rick, people like us, talk about these issues. And I think there’s more examples of these successful conversions and projects. It’s something people want to do. One thought is maybe, I think, the incentive gets people off the fence.
The reality is, things are expensive these days and tackling a project in your landscape is no exception. So I think what we’re seeing, this rebate covers probably about 15% to 50% of the project costs, depending on what people are doing. So I think it’s just that little extra nudge that helps people complete something they’re already interested in completing.
Miller: Is there any way of knowing that? I mean, if this is going to get people who are truly considering it to do it, maybe weren’t going to, versus those who are going to do it anyway and now it’s just simply cheaper for them?
Denning: It’s certainly something we can tease out. What we’ll do is we’ll have a post-program survey and evaluate what was the motivation for this program, for you participating in the program? Helping us measure the success and the indicators and help us adapt for next year. I think, based on the volume of applications that we saw and continue to see, we’re still talking to people now, letting them know to revisit this winter for next year … I think it is definitely something that was top of mind for folks.
Miller: So after people go through this, how do you make sure that their gardens work? These are folks, I imagine many of them knew how to take care of grass, even if they were watering them more than you say they should have. But now they may, for the very first time, have a very different landscape, different for them. How do you make sure that they succeed?
Denning: That’s a really good question. And the answer is education. Providing that education upfront and following that up with more education. Like the work that Rick does in his nursery, and local extension services, and events where we can collaborate and provide some of those resources to folks – because you’re definitely right, it’s just as easy to overwater a low water use xeriscape or a native garden as it is to overwater lawn if we don’t recognize the changes we need to make and know how to do that. So I think the simple answer is just more and more continuing that education to the customers and bringing in the expertise that our local experts, the extension, Rick’s group have, to help those people maintain that.
Miller: Dan and Rick, thanks very much.
Denning / Martinson: Thank you.
Miller: Dan Denning is a water conservation program manager for the city of Bend. Rick Martinson is a co-owner of WinterCreek Nursery, and founder and director of the High Desert Horticultural Center.
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