Can Californians keep their lawns?
The tremendous rains over the winter have filled California’s reservoirs, blessed the snowpack, and brought waterfalls and ancient lakes back to life.
In some parts of the state, the precipitation has also revived something that was thought to have been a thing of the past: green lawns.
Last spring, when California was still in a worsening drought, Jeff Fox and Amy Bach let the grass in their San Francisco backyard go dry. They covered their desiccated lawn with bark chips, added some succulents and well-placed rocks, and welcomed their new, drought-friendly landscaping. They were among the thousands of people who abandoned the California dream of a single-family home surrounded by a lush, neatly kept lawn.
Then this winter, the Bay Area, like much of the state, was battered with enormous amounts of rain. By January, the lawn “came back fuller and greener than it’s ever been,” Fox said. “We were totally taken by surprise.”
With the rainy season now over, Fox and many other Californians are wondering what to do with their lawns. Is it wise to water them, or should they be ripped out? For people who didn’t give up their lawns last year, does the revival mean they never have to? I decided to ask some experts.
Julie Saare-Edmonds, senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Water Resources, was clear in her advice: Californians should still replace their lawns with climate-resistant landscaping “as we prepare for an eventual return to dry conditions,” she said.
As The New York Times has reported, California’s water issues haven’t gone away for good; they have merely taken a back seat. A warmer climate has intensified the state’s weather whiplash, the rapid swings between dry and wet spells. So the state will sometimes have stronger winter storms, as it did this year, but also longer and more intense droughts.
“Californians cannot let
their guard down when preparing for a hotter and drier future driven by climate change,” Saare-Edmonds said in an email. “As a state, we must embrace water conservation as a way of life, rain or shine.”
Grass lawns are particularly water intensive. A majority of California’s residential water is used outdoors, largely to irrigate yards. Keeping nonnative
plants alive in a state that doesn’t receive any rain during its hottest months is a tall order.
Jay Lund, a vice director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, said that thanks to the wet winter, Fox and other homeowners like him could “have a partial lawn for free until the lawn dries out.” But after that, he would recommend replacing
the lawn with native plants with low-water needs.
Laura Ramos, interim director of research and education at the California Water Institute at Cal State Fresno, also said that lawn owners could hold on to them this year, as long as they gave them up again next year. In other words: You can choose to revel in this year’s reprieve, but
it’s best to get on with the tough choices you’ll eventually have to make.
“Water that is conserved in wet years is water that can potentially be saved for our water providers to use in future years,” Ramos said in an email. “Because future precipitation is uncertain, we would recommend that Californians continue their conservation efforts and make it a way of life.”