A full professional xeriscape conversion in the Salt Lake Valley typically runs $8 to $20 per square foot — real money on a quarter-acre lot. The good news is that nobody says you have to convert everything at once, and the smartest projects start with rebate money that is already on the table. Here is a phased plan that cuts your water bill year one without wrecking your budget.
Step 1: Line Up the Rebate Before You Touch Anything
Utah Water Savers runs the Flip Your Strip program, which pays a per-square-foot rebate for converting park-strip grass to water-wise landscaping in participating cities, including much of the Salt Lake Valley. The critical detail: you must apply and get approval before removing any turf. Check your address, apply, and let that rebate fund your first phase. The same site offers free Localscapes design classes, which brings us to step two.
Step 2: Plan the Whole Yard on Paper, Even If You Build One Piece
The Localscapes method — Utah’s homegrown design approach — gives you a simple framework: a central open shape (a smaller lawn or gravel area), defined gathering spaces, and planted beds around the edges. Sketch the end state for the full yard now, then phase it. A plan keeps phase one from becoming something you rip out in phase three, and it is the single best way to avoid the classic budget-killer: buying plants twice.
Step 3: Kill Turf the Cheap Way
Renting a sod cutter for a weekend works, but the nearly free methods work too if you can wait. Sheet mulching — cardboard laid over mowed grass, topped with four inches of wood chip mulch — smothers turf over a fall and winter. Summer solarization under clear plastic cooks it in six to eight weeks of July heat. What you should not do is dump gravel over living grass; it comes back through, and that shortcut is why gravel yards get a bad name.
Step 4: Convert Sprinkler Zones to Drip, One at a Time
You rarely need a new irrigation system. Retrofit kits convert an existing spray zone to drip at the valve, putting water at the roots instead of misting it into our canyon winds. Converting zones as you convert areas spreads the cost and typically cuts that zone’s water use by a third to half. This is the one step where hiring a pro for a half day often pays for itself in avoided leaks.
Step 5: Buy Small Plants, and Plant in Fall
One-gallon native plants cost a fraction of five-gallon ones and usually catch up within two seasons, because young roots adapt to our alkaline clay faster. October planting lets winter moisture establish them, which means less hand-watering next summer. Firecracker penstemon, yarrow, blue flax and rabbitbrush are all cheap, forgiving starters.
Step 6: Mulch Deep and Water by the Guide
Finish each area with three inches of wood mulch (or two inches of gravel mulch in the hottest strips) to hold moisture and block weeds. Run whatever lawn you keep on the state’s free Weekly Lawn Watering Guide instead of a fixed timer — in spring and fall it often calls for one watering a week or none, and following it is the cheapest water savings in Utah.
Where to Spend and Where to Save
- Spend on: drip components and a filter, grading that moves water away from the foundation, and one or two anchor elements — a boulder grouping or a waterwise tree — that make the design look finished.
- Save on: plant size, turf removal labor you can do yourself, and decorative extras that can wait for a later phase.
As a benchmark, a typical Sugar House park strip of around 300 square feet, done owner-built with the rebate, can net out to a few hundred dollars — and it is the most visible, most water-hungry turf you own.
Xeriscaping is Hernandez Landscaping’s specialty, and we are genuinely happy to tell you which phases are worth doing yourself and which are worth hiring out. If you want a plan, a phase built, or the whole conversion handled, the on-site estimate is free.
