A Tiny Yard Makeover

From depressing to drought resistant and pollinator friendly blooms.

Here in Northwest Colorado, we have a small house with a small yard and a magnificent view. It’s taken many years to make our outdoor space functional and beautiful. Read below to see how we got rid of the scraggly lawn, and now have drought resistant blooming plants that bees and butterflies love throughout most of the summer.

Our backyard view looking at Emerald Mountain.

Whether you have a large or small outdoor area, create a container garden, or can work in a community space, I hope you can find a way to dig in the dirt and grow some plants, it’s so rewarding. In the western U.S., we are seeing the effects of climate change, with the region becoming hotter, drier, and our soil is holding less moisture. This is called aridification. If you want to learn more about that, there’s great info on the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council’s site. Along the Yampa River where I live, we are encouraged to conserve water. One way that makes a ton of sense is to use less water, and more wisely, in your yard.

Do you have thirsty grass that needs watering all summer? We did, but we gave up years ago and it dried out, got patchy and weedy, and wasn’t a great place to spend time. So, whether you want to replace grass to conserve water, or help the native pollinators, or grow veggies, or you just want to improve your outdoor area, I’m here to tell you that it’s worth it! You can create a space with real benefits, and with planning, it can use much less water than traditional grass.

I’m not an expert and I knew I needed help for this adventure, so I consulted with Karen Vail, a gardener and landscaper, who has published “Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Southern Rockies,” with Mary O’Brien. Search online for resources local to you, but if you live in my area or a similar elevation and region (6,867 feet in altitude, western slope of the Rocky Mountains), then I highly recommend that you start with the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council’s Guide to Yampascaping. We also have access to the Routt County Master Gardeners. Is there a similar group in your area? The Colorado Native Plant Society has a great site. And to get down to the actual directions for converting your lawn, there are options here on the Rewilding site.

To refresh our sorry looking side yard, this is what we did:

1. We covered the entire space with overlapping sheets of cardboard (minus the tape and staples).
   Hint: Try asking for cardboard at a local business that gets deliveries of large items!

   

2. We covered it with a few inches of mulch and left it for the winter, but you can leave it for two or three months and the cardboard and plants under it should be decomposed. Leaving it under the snow in winter meant there was plenty of moisture which the soil retained under mulch. The hard packed clay soil softened, and the cardboard didn’t kill the good soil organisms the way plastic would.
   Hint: Ask a tree trimmer if they can bring their mulched trees to you instead of the dump. It’s not as pretty as the mulch you buy, but free is beautiful.

   Hint x2: We got waaaaaay too much, I should have asked them to stop. We wound up with a mountain that got hot and started smoking after a few days. We had to stand on it while our shoe soles started to melt and spread it out to cool it down. Then we gave about half of it away. So I guess the hint is, don’t get too much mulch.

   

3. We planned to plant in the spring, but it got pushed back to midsummer, and it was no problem.
   Hint: Water the plants to keep them happy as they get established, but choose ones that are native to your area, or drought resistant, and you don’t need to water much when they are grown!

   

4. We added a walkway, a seating area, and a fort for the kiddo. It’s a lovely space now, with lots of bees and butterflies.

   

This was June, about a year after we planted.

I failed to take any good pictures of the space at the end of the second year after we planted. You can take my word for it that everything filled in beautifully. Below is the only photo I took, apparently. You can see the flowers behind my artwork. I’ll take more pictures this summer!

Garden in the background and bee linocuts

I really only watered the new side yard in hot and dry weather when the plants were in their second year, and then only every 3 or 4 days. If it was cool, cloudy, or rainy, they looked great and I didn’t bother. This has turned into a wonderful place to have lunch, for kids to play in the fort, and the dogs to hang out in the shade. I love our new side yard!

And one more piece of art below because we do have a healthy bunch of echinacea and I love how it blooms late in the season. We don’t have bunnies, so that’s artistic license. In reality, we have dogs chasing each other around the clumps of plants while I yell at them to stop so nothing gets trampled.

Echinacea, linocut with gouache by Jill Bergman

Thanks for reading about our yard makeover and sheet mulching adventures! Let me know if you’ve tried this too, or any other ways to adjust your outdoor space to a hotter, drier climate.