Every landscape has a water budget, whether anyone wrote it down or not. For most homes along Colorado’s urban corridor, the single largest line item in that budget is the lawn — and the least examined part of the lawn is the one out front.
The short version: a conventional Kentucky bluegrass lawn in the Denver area needs roughly two to two and a half inches of water a week to stay green through high summer — several times what summer rain delivers — and over a full watering season, an average front lawn drinks tens of thousands of gallons. Water utilities along the corridor have long reported that in summer, as much as half of a typical household’s water use goes to the landscape. Most of that is turf.
None of this means turf is the enemy. It means turf is expensive water-wise, and like anything expensive, it should earn its place. Here’s how we think about the front lawn’s water budget — and the designed alternatives that cost a fraction of it.
What a Bluegrass Lawn Actually Drinks
Kentucky bluegrass is a cool-season grass from climates that get regular rain. Denver’s semi-arid corridor averages around fifteen inches of precipitation a year — much of it as snow — while a bluegrass lawn kept green through the season wants far more than the sky provides. The gap is made up entirely by supplemental watering, week after week, from spring green-up to the first hard freezes.
Put real numbers on a real lawn and the scale becomes clear. A modest front lawn of 1,500 square feet, supplied the supplemental water bluegrass asks for in this climate, takes in on the order of 20,000 gallons or more in a single season. Larger front lawns in Arvada, Centennial, or Greenwood Village can double or triple that.
That’s the budget. The next question is what you’re buying with it.
The Front Lawn Is the Easiest Water Decision on Your Property
Walk through any neighborhood and watch how lawns are actually used. Children and dogs play on back lawns. Dinners happen on patios. The front lawn, for most households, is used by exactly no one — it is looked at, from the street and the front window, and walked past on the way to the door.
That’s what makes it the easiest water decision on the property. A back lawn that hosts your family earns its water. A front lawn that exists to be green is pure landscape expense — the most heavily watered square footage on the lot, doing the least living.
This is also why we rarely recommend replacing all turf. Good design keeps grass where grass is used and spends the front of the property on things that work harder: structure, planting, and arrival.
The Alternatives That Don’t Drink
A front landscape that sips instead of gulps isn’t one thing — it’s a composition, and the best ones layer three elements.
Western turf grasses. If you want the look of a lawn out front, buffalograss and blue grama — both native to Colorado’s shortgrass prairie — deliver it on a fraction of bluegrass’s water once established. They green up later in spring and go honey-colored after frost, which is their native rhythm, not a flaw. For many front lawns, that trade — a warm seasonal palette in exchange for a fraction of the water — is an easy yes.
Layered, designed planting. The strongest water-wise front landscapes replace turf with structured planting beds: native and climate-adapted plants proven in Colorado — including Plant Select and CSU-tested introductions — arranged in deliberate masses with defined edges. Done well, this reads as composed and intentional in every season, with far more color and texture than turf ever offered. Done poorly, it reads as a weed patch; the difference is design, which is exactly the point.
Structure and arrival. The front of a home is an entry sequence — walk, steps, low walls, a seat wall or landing, boulders placed once and placed right. Hardscape drinks nothing, looks finished in January, and does what front turf never could: it makes arriving at your home feel considered. Many of our strongest front-of-home projects spend the former lawn’s footprint on a wider stone walk, a defined entry court, and planting that frames both.
Designed Conversions vs. the Gravel Moonscape
A caution, because everyone has seen the failure mode: a lawn scraped off, fabric rolled out, gravel dumped on top, three shrubs marooned in the middle. That isn’t water-wise design — it’s turf removal with nothing designed to replace it, and it’s why some homeowners flinch at the word xeriscape.
The difference between a moonscape and a landscape is that one is a removal project and the other is a design project. A converted front landscape should be planned as carefully as any patio or wall: grading resolved, edges defined, plant structure composed for all four seasons, and the whole plan built to be maintained. Water savings are the result of good design, never a substitute for it.
What This Looks Like as a Project
When we take on a front-of-home conversion, it starts the way every project starts: designed together. We walk the property with you, talk about how the front of the home should work and what it should say, and put a plan on paper before anything is removed — often as part of a master plan for the whole property, so the front entry, walks, planting, and any walls or pillars are one composition rather than a patchwork. Irrigation is reworked to match the new plan as part of the build.
Worth knowing: several utilities and programs along the corridor offer turf-replacement incentives for exactly this kind of conversion, and well-designed plans tend to qualify smoothly. We can point you to what applies in your city during planning.
The result is a front landscape with a water budget a fraction of the old lawn’s — that also happens to be the most finished-looking frontage on the street. You can see one in our Arvada front entry renovation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much water does a bluegrass lawn use in Colorado?
In high summer, a Kentucky bluegrass lawn in the Denver area needs roughly two to two and a half inches of water per week to stay green — far beyond what rain provides in a semi-arid climate. Over a full season, even a modest front lawn takes in tens of thousands of gallons of supplemental water.
Will a water-wise front landscape look bare in winter?
Not if it’s designed rather than just planted. Structure — stone walks, low walls, boulders, evergreen plants, and plants with strong winter form — is what carries a landscape through a Colorado January. The gravel-and-three-shrubs look comes from skipping design, not from saving water.
Do I have to remove all my turf to save water?
No, and we usually advise against it. The smart move is keeping grass where it’s actually used — play areas, the back lawn — and converting the turf that exists only to be looked at, which is usually the front. That’s where the water savings are largest and the design payoff is highest.
Put the Front of Your Home on a Better Budget
If the front lawn at your home in Arvada, Golden, Denver, Lone Tree, Centennial, Greenwood Village, or Boulder is drinking more than it’s worth, the right first step is a plan — not a removal crew. We design and build complete front-of-home transformations: entry walks, steps, pillars, low walls, and layered Colorado planting, designed together with you and built by one team. See finished examples in our case studies.
Start with a free call about what your front landscape could be doing instead.
Owner-led, with 25+ years of hands-on landscape experience. Building as Colorado Native Landscapes & Design since 2018.
Most projects range from $35,000 to $200,000+.