After a month of back-breaking work, we finally passed our inspection for the Aurora Waterwise Landscape Program. This is a city-sponsored grant where they will reimburse you for ripping out your bluegrass sod and changing it to a desert-style landscape. Unfortunately, they don't reimburse you for labor, only the plants and mulch.
While all my friends and relatives back in Missouri were celebrating an unseasonably warm April, we were still battling snow in Colorado. So it was a challenge to get the plants in and keep them alive! But the inspector didn't seem to mind a few frost-bitten leaves.
After she gave the OK, we had to install the drip irrigation system. While all these plants are drought-tolerant, they still need a little water in order to survive, especially in the summer. A drip system is supposed to be more efficient than traditional spray heads that fling the water up into the air. But a drip system is somewhat tedious to install, because you need a line running to every single plant. We kept 3 trees and 12 bushes that were planted by the builder, and then added 52 new ones. Whew!
Once the irrigation lines were buried, we were able to lay down the mulch. I ran the calculations for the recommended 2-inch layer, but when the truck drove up to our house, we both freaked at the massive pile they dumped onto our driveway.
Luckily it only took us one day to transfer all the mulch off the driveway and into the yard, but it was a really long day. And in several spots, I think the mulch was 6 inches thick, not 2.
The last task was installing the yard lights. I found these metal sculptures on Etsy several months ago. I'd thought about getting some of those old rusty wagon wheels, but half my neighbors already have that in their yard.
These light fixtures look rustic, but a bit more modern, and they look really good at night when the lights are shining up inside them.
At present, we're the only yard at our end of the block that has switched out their sod for a low-water landscape, but based on the number of landscape trucks I've seen driving around the neighborhood, I predict there will be many more by the end of the year.
