Spraying to Make Yards Green ... but With Paint, Not Water
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
Some homeowners are exploring other ways to make their grass green, including a fresh coat of paint and artificial turf.
By MARC LACEY
Published: April 9, 2011
PHOENIX — There used to be two kinds of homeowners in this scorching city, those with dazzling green lawns irrigated by sprinklers and those with more natural backyard expanses of rocks, cactuses and desert flora, which required no watering at all.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
Many homeowners' associations in Arizona require either desert landscaping or green grass, which requires extensive watering.
Now, though, the grass may be greener next door simply because of a fresh coat of paint.
Homeowners’ associations in this arid region typically have rules requiring residents to maintain either desert landscaping or green grass, with brown lawns not an option.
This is the time of year, with summer approaching and the winter grass dying out, when letters typically go out to homeowners reminding them of the rules and making it clear that violators could face fines or even legal action should their lawns take on an unsatisfactory hue.
The pressure to keep grass green has prompted some residents to try money-saving shortcuts, the most innovative of which is to dye the grass green.
The grass spraying business took off here as the housing crisis escalated and real estate brokers were looking to quickly increase the curb appeal of abandoned properties on the cheap. A lawn painting, using a vegetable-based dye, can cost about $200. Vigorous homeowners’ associations, which can fine owners thousands of dollars if a dispute drags on, have also been good for business, said Klaus Lehmann of Turf-Painters Enterprise.
Doug McGraw, who lives in the Dreaming Summit subdivision in western Phoenix, has been cited for neglecting his lawn. Like many homeowners here, Mr. McGraw saw his finances in turmoil of couple of years back and had no extra money to spend on the lawn. “I just let it go one year, and it went to brown,” he said.
A citation letter arrived from the homeowners’ association.
That is when his wife, tongue in cheek, remarked that if food could be dyed, why not lawns? Mr. McGraw began researching the issue and discovered that those who operate athletic fields and golf courses do indeed use lawn dye to keep their grass green year-round.
Unsure whether this would be allowed by his association, and somewhat embarrassed to be taking the easy way out, he dyed his lawn one night in the spring of 2009 without telling a soul in the neighborhood.
By the end of 2009, when the grass needed a touchup, he painted it by day and even offered to do the same for his neighbors, for a fee. Only one person took him up on the offer, but nobody objected to his quick fix either.
Michael Hague, a neighbor, has a different solution, artificial turf, which has been a compromise choice in some Arizona neighborhoods for a while now. He says it helps him save time, money and confrontations with the homeowners’ association.
“It’s easier to have fake grass,” Mr. Hague said, looking over his deep green, perfectly trimmed yard. “You don’t have to worry about it. It doesn’t fade.”
So realistic is his turf, he said proudly, that a neighbor once mentioned to someone else on the street how green the Hague lawn was, not realizing it was made in a factory.
But “plastic grass,” as Ed Cunningham, a firefighter who lives nearby, calls the artificial stuff, gets too hot on bare feet in the Arizona sun. He hires a landscaper to handle the painstaking process of planting Bermuda grass, which eventually goes dormant in the winter and is supplemented with rye grass, which dies out in the spring. Keeping the lawn irrigated means his water bill is higher than some of his neighbors’, but the look and feel of the real thing is worth the expense, he said.
But do not get devotees of xeriscaped yards, as desert landscaping is known, started about the deleterious effects of all that grass planted around the desert, wastefully sapping water, a valuable and scarce commodity here.
One of the ways water reaches Phoenix is through the system of aqueducts, tunnels, pumping plants and pipelines that make up the Central Arizona Project, which brings it from the Colorado River. Candidates for the board of directors of the project are quizzed about their personal water-use habits by The Arizona Republic at election time.
“Seven years ago, my wife and I moved from a home with turf grass, front and back, swimming pool and land sprinkling system to a home with total desert landscaping and no swimming pool,” Timothy Bray, a water resource consultant, responded to the newspaper last fall, citing his conservation credentials.
But Frank Fairbanks, a retired public administrator, had to sheepishly acknowledge that he had grass. “Unfortunately, like many of our central Phoenix neighbors, we have a green lawn which consumes more water than xeriscape,” he told the paper. (Both were elected.)
Costs of the various approaches vary widely. Desert landscaping saves substantially on water and maintenance, and can be installed on a bare-bones budget or a high-end one, especially if towering saguaro cactuses are involved. Lawn paint lasts about three months before turning an odd shade of blue and costs only a couple of hundred dollars for a modest lawn, although the grass still needs to be watered so that it will not die out entirely.
Plastic grass, probably the costliest option at the outset, still varies in price depending on how close to natural it looks and feels. Watering and trimming costs disappear, though occasional sweeping may be necessary.
The great divide between grass people and desert people can sometimes even divide an Arizona family.
“We’re seeing a trend away from grass,” said Rodney Glassman, who got his Ph.D. in arid land resource sciences at the University of Arizona. He introduced legislation while serving on the Tucson City Council requiring new commercial buildings to collect and reuse rainwater and promoting the reuse of some water in new homes.
Mr. Glassman said he prefers desert landscaping but his wife, Sasha, prefers grass, so they did what married couples do and compromised with a bit of both at their Tucson home. At the residence they are renting in the Phoenix area, where his wife recently got a job, he said, “there’s a patch of grass in the back, but it’s a small patch.”
Marty Campisi, who runs Desert Oasis Landscape Design and Concepts in Phoenix, has desert in his backyard and promotes the natural approach, reminding customers that many municipalities offer financial incentives to those who convert from grass. “The ones who want lawns are mostly the ones with kids,” he said. “I tell them that children can play in a desert landscape, as long as you stay away from anything with thorns.”
As for painting the grass, Mr. Campisi does not even bring that up. “It’s crazy,” he said. “It’s putting a Band-Aid on the situation.”
Salvador Rodriguez contributed reporting.
Arizona is #1 in sales for Always Green Lawn Paint
No comments:
Post a Comment