Salt Lake City Thirsty for New Landscaping Rules

You can rip your strip and stock the space between the sidewalk and street with low-water plants. But, because of an outdated Salt Lake City ordinance headed for an overhaul, you could face a fine if you do that in your front yard.
  
That means Mayor Rocky Anderson is breaking the law with his much-touted drought-tolerant lawn. So is the city's water-conservation coordinator. And so are countless other property owners.
  
So Utah's capital - considered one of the state's most progressive cities on water conservation - plans to let the suburbia-style rule wither away and instead sanction what already is taking root.
   
A proposed ordinance would allow homeowners to do in the rest of their yard what they can do in their parking strip: devote a third of the land to vegetation including turf, flowers, trees or shrubs and leave the remainder as mulch, gravel or rocks.
  
"We aren't saying you have to do the one-third, two-thirds [plan]," says Kevin LoPiccolo, a zoning administrator. "You can still do the entire yard in bluegrass if you want. [But] if one wants to minimize the turf, we're OK with that."
  
Stephanie Duer, the conservation coordinator who acknowledges she could be cited for her yard, says it's time to move on from a mandated blanket of turf.
  
"This isn't suburbia. This is an urban center. This is the West, and that's not what the West looks like."
  
The proposed ordinance is a compromise. Duer would rather see the city get out of regulating such private property, beyond controlling for erosion.
  
Anderson recently learned he could be ticketed for his yard - planted with Russian sage, lavender and ornamental grasses. He says he thought the front-yard turf requirement was weeded out when the city changed the rules a couple of years ago to permit drought-tolerant landscaping in the parking strip.
  
"I never imagined there would be a requirement for turf on people's front lawns," Anderson says. If anything, he adds, the city should restrict the amount of Kentucky bluegrass.
  
The ordinance change "has nothing to do with my yard," he says. "It has to do with conservation of precious water resources, and, I might add, individual freedom."
 
Like other homeowners who are breaking the rules, the mayor never has been ticketed because citations are issued only after someone complains.
  
When Anderson learned of his transgression, Duer recalls the mayor saying, "Cite me."
  
Businesses will feel the change the most, she says. The city has to approve their landscaping plans, and the current ordinance requires turf.
  
Duer designed the yard for Onequa Corner, a Neighborhood Housing Services live-work project funded in part by the city's Redevelopment Agency. The yucca, Russian sage, lavenders and gravel technically shouldn't have been allowed, but they were, she says. That 2004 project helped spur the ordinance change.
  
The corner of 1300 South and 300 West provides another example. The Wal-Mart on one side has turf while the landscaping at the neighboring Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse includes the "more responsible" roses, she says.
  
"This is big for commercial property," Duer adds. "Big."
  
Mark Danenhauer, in charge of Utah River Council's Rip Your Strip program, endorses the proposed change.
 
Replacing grass with drought-tolerant plants saves 15 gallons of water a year per square foot. And more people are going xeric: While 1,100 people pledged to rip their parking strips last year, some 1,500 already have signed up this summer.
  
"People realize that it's something not only that will save water, it's [also] a beautiful, natural-looking environment," Danenhauer says. "People want to do that in the rest of their landscape."
  
Other Western cities have required xeriscaping. During "drought alerts," Las Vegas, for example, prohibits turf in front of new homes and allows only 50 percent turf in backyards.
  
Duer doesn't see Salt Lake City forcing residents' hands - as long as they continue to conserve voluntarily.