Every spring, thousands of Utah homeowners look at their yards and see a growing list of problems. Patchy grass. Runoff. Rising water bills. Weekends lost to yard work. It’s enough to make homeowners ask: “How much grass should we rip out?”
Eric Millburn thinks there’s a better place to start.
“We don’t start by asking how much grass someone wants to remove,” said Millburn, owner of Millburn Lawn & Landscape. “We start by asking how they want to use their property. Then we design around the home, the family, the budget, water use, and how much maintenance they realistically want.”
That approach recently transformed the front yard of a West Jordan home and offers a useful lesson for Utah homeowners considering their own landscape renovations.
Before: The West Jordan home’s biggest problem was much of the front yard consisted of a sloped lawn. That makes mowing more difficult, and irrigation water can run downhill before enough reaches the root zone. Homeowners can end up using more water while still struggling to maintain healthy turf.
After: Rather than simply replacing the grass with rock, the design team terraced the grade to create more defined areas. Decorative boulders helped integrate the elevation changes into the design. Water-wise plantings added texture and seasonal interest. Artificial turf preserved green areas without requiring traditional irrigation.
A paver patio created usable space, while outdoor lighting extended the landscape visually into the evening, and drip irrigation now sends water directly to plants rather than broadly spraying the landscape. Dedicated lines were also installed for the homeowners’ potted plants.
The Utah Yard Is Changing
After completing thousands of projects across northern Utah, the Millburn team has seen homeowners arrive with remarkably similar wish lists.
They want their yards to look better, use less water, and require less maintenance. They want outdoor spaces their families can actually enjoy. And they want to know whether rebates or conservation programs can help pay for improvements.
“What I like about this project is how relatable it is,” Millburn said. “This is a normal Utah home with challenges we see every day. The homeowners simply wanted a better-looking, more usable yard that required less water and maintenance.”
Rebates Can Change the Math
For many Utah homeowners, the biggest surprise in a landscape renovation may have nothing to do with plants, pavers, or irrigation. It may be the money available to help pay for it.
Depending on where a homeowner lives and the scope of a project, water-conservation programs may provide rebates for qualifying landscape improvements. The challenge is knowing which programs apply and understanding the requirements before construction begins.
For the West Jordan project, Millburn helped identify applicable rebate opportunities and prepared project information, water-savings reports, and other documentation the homeowners needed for their applications. The available programs ultimately returned almost $5,000 to the family.
A homeowner considering landscape improvements should investigate available programs early, since eligibility requirements and funding can vary by location and program.
Water Savings Continue After Construction
Traditional lawns aren’t inherently bad. But turf placed in difficult-to-irrigate or rarely used areas can require significant water and maintenance without providing much benefit to the homeowner. That’s why Millburn approaches landscape renovation as a complete system, not a collection of individual upgrades.
As a full-service landscape company, Millburn can take a project from the first design conversation through rebate assistance, grading, irrigation, hardscape construction, planting, outdoor lighting, turf installation, and ongoing maintenance. The goal is to make those pieces work together and pay off (literally) with valuable rebates.
Five Questions to Ask Before Redesigning Your Yard
Before deciding how much lawn to remove or what materials to install, homeowners can start with five practical questions:
- How do we want to use this property?Entertaining, gardening, playing, relaxing, and improving curb appeal can require very different designs.
- Which areas of lawn are useful?Turf can be valuable where people use it. Grass that exists primarily because “it has always been there” deserves another look.
- How much maintenance do we realistically want?Plant selection, turf, irrigation, and hardscape should reflect how much ongoing work a homeowner wants to do.
- Where are we wasting water?Slopes, overspray, runoff, aging irrigation, and poorly placed turf can all contribute to unnecessary water use.
- What rebates are available before we begin?Checking eligibility early can influence the design and potentially reduce the project’s final cost.
Shift the conversation from “What should we remove?” to “What should this property become?”
One Company, From First Sketch to Finished Landscape
Millburn’s full-service model and experienced team can guide homeowners through the initial consultation and landscape design, identify potential conservation rebates, prepare supporting project documentation, and carry the project through construction and installation. Ongoing maintenance services can help protect the finished landscape afterward.
For homeowners, that means the person designing a landscape isn’t working in isolation from the teams responsible for building, irrigating, and maintaining it.
And that may be the larger lesson from this otherwise ordinary West Jordan yard. A landscape renovation doesn’t have to begin with a grand vision or a massive property. Sometimes it begins with an awkward slope, an inefficient sprinkler system, and a homeowner thinking, There has to be a better way to do this.
There often is.
Ready to see what your yard could become?
Schedule a landscape consultation with Millburn Lawn & Landscape to explore design options, water-wise improvements, and available conservation rebates.
See the Full Transformation. Click to view the before-and-after project, explore water-wise ideas, and request a landscape consultation.