Margo and Larry Newhouse knew the "mangy" lawn had to go, as well as the rest of the water-sucking landscape at their midtown home. So what did they put in instead? Well, for part of the landscape, they put in grass.
Deer and bear grass, to be exact, two hardy clumping species that require little maintenance or water.
"The backyard, when we moved here, was a mangy lawn," says Margo Newhouse. Except for a couple of trees, the couple took out everything in front and behind the house three years ago and let Scott Calhoun of Zona Gardens create a desert look. "We definitely wanted xeriscape and didn't want it to be all cactus," she says.
While the landscape, a 2008 xeriscape award-winner, includes ocotillo, wildflowers and yucca, Newhouse admits her favorites are the grasses.
"The deer grass is pretty all summer," she says. "When everything else in the winter looks bad, there's these gorgeous seed heads."
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The deer grass needs only a single swipe with a blade once a year. They don't ever trim the bear grass, which this year sprouted flower stalks.
That's the kind of endorsement Calhoun hopes convinces homeowners to ditch what he calls "silly grass" for the native kind. The gardening author and landscape designer insists he's not a "lawn Nazi," but "if the only time you step on it is to mow it, you should remove it."
Besides their low maintenance and sculptural look, native grasses create an inviting habitat for birds and provide an ever-changing color palette when the blades of some species of grass turn from straw to green to red.
Native grasses are a bit of a misnomer as there are none in the Tucson basin, says Calhoun, who will talk about the plants in a workshop. He uses Arizona natives that grow in higher elevations such as Patagonia. These plants need a little more irrigation than Sonoran Desert perennials, but "most of these will grow in regular Tucson soil," he says.
Along with deer and bear grasses, Calhoun recommends homeowners consider sideoats grama and blue grama species as good ornamental plants. None of these are as invasive as buffelgrass and fountain grass, outlawed imports that now are out of control in the desert.
If you go
"When Grass is Not a Lawn: Designing with Native Grasses"
• What: Workshop by landscape designers Scott Calhoun and Greg Corman.
• When: 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct.17.
• Where: Education center at Tohono Chul Park, 7366 N. Paseo del Norte.
• Admission: $10, $8 for park members.
• Reservations: 742-6455, Ext. zero.
• Information: www.tohonochulpark.org