The Desert Was Not Meant to Be a Lawn
There’s an old Buddhist slogan: Be where you already are. We Americans would do well to take that advice, in a modified form, when it comes to our treatment of the environment: Let where you are be where you are.
If you live in the Northeast, don’t maintain a lawn in the pretense that you live on the prairie. Let the trees and bushes grow some more.
If you live in the South, don’t use northern grasses and water them like crazy to try to get them to grow.
Above all else, if you live in the desert Southwest, don’t pretend that your yard is an oasis. Xeriscape, for goodness sake! Most of New Mexico is not at all suited for lawns. Tucson is not Cornwall. There are no sheep grazing in verdant pastures. The California soil is suited for scrub and for jericho trees, not bluegrass.
Stop watering the desert. It wasn’t meant to be a lawn.
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