When Regan Glover purchased her first home a few years ago, she began planting her landscape. As a descendant of generations of horticulturists who started Glover Nursery over a century ago, Regan was familiar with plants and gardens but wasn’t sure where to start when it came to native Utah plants.
“I took home this tiny start of a globemallow that looked like it was about to die,” Regan says. “I put it in the ground and kind of ignored it. When I turned around, it was this huge, gorgeous plant with all these blossoms.”
When it comes to native plants, Regan learned, “Do nothing and they thrive.”
Regan’s story represents a statewide consumer trend of more homeowners interested in planting waterwise landscapes. Today, Regan is spreading her knowledge as company culture officer at Glover Nursery. Her role has also involved working with the new Utah Water Ways initiative to teach consumers how to create waterwise home landscapes in Utah.
Building bridges over troubled waters
For decades, Utah has grappled with drought, water shortages, population growth and new developments. During the 2023 Utah legislative session, decision-makers directed the creation of Utah Water Ways, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mandate to rapidly accelerate water conservation success statewide.
Cynthia Bee, a sustainable landscapes expert, joined the project shortly after its creation as director of communications. She brought a unique mix of knowledge gained from her background in landscape architecture, public communications and 13 years of experience at the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District. In these roles, she taught more than 30,000 homeowners how to “landscape like we live in Utah.”
Water conservation is a state-wide challenge that requires collaboration across sectors and industries. Bee says that while nurseries are trying to expand their waterwise options and the water districts are educating residents, it is difficult to create effective programs that span the government realm and the private sector. “That shift rarely goes well in either direction. There are always gaps and gulfs,” she says.
That is where Utah Water Ways steps in. “The whole purpose of Utah Water Ways is to employ people who can move between silos in all areas that affect water conservation because this is a statewide issue,” Bee says. “It affects lots of different industries, and actionable solutions for each business case vary widely. Our goal is to establish resources, provide expertise and develop tools that remove barriers to water conservation from all sectors.”
“If at first you don’t succeed, grow, grow again.”
— Reagan Glover
By coordinating with these different industries and groups, Utah Water Ways recently launched its Utah Plant Selector tool. This app makes it easy for consumers to choose waterwise plants that will look beautiful in their home landscapes. The tool was developed by Simplyscapes, an online platform that helps businesses and homeowners design landscapes through software that helps users visualize new layouts and designs of their outdoor spaces.
“The Utah Plant Selector aims to solve challenges for Utahns while also providing critical metrics to inform and enhance our waterwise plant supply chain,” Bee says. “Generous donations from the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation, Zions Bancorp and Utah Kennecott Copper LLC have made this tool and its accompanying garden center signage freely available, removing significant barriers to adoption.”
Private businesses such as Perennial Favorites, Glover Nursery and High Country Gardens are implementing and training their staff on the Utah Plant Selector tool so they can better educate consumers. High Country Gardens is even specifically helping grow plant material to fulfill preorders made on the app.
This summer, the Utah Water Ways team will “promote the tool via the Slow the Flow statewide water conservation campaign,” according to Bee.
Growing the supply chain
As demand for waterwise plants grows, so does the need for waterwise plant supply and public education. The Utah Water Ways team hopes local Utah nurseries and growers will meet these needs.
A buyer who is interested in transitioning to waterwise landscaping needs to know what plants are available, Bee says. When she taught homeowners about waterwise landscaping, she helped them “create plant combinations that hold their look together through the whole season and … look beautiful.”
While native plants can seem to be the best option for waterwise landscaping, Glover Nursery COO Ryan Glover says they often aren’t the best choice for both the business and the consumer.
“When somebody comes in looking for native plants, they often just want a plant that doesn’t need a lot of water and is easy to grow,” Ryan says. “Turning that into a commercially viable and beautiful plant that people are excited to put in their yards is a big piece of why we recommend looking at durable plants versus specifically only natives.”
The creators of the Utah Plant Selector tool took this into account when creating the tool. Their catalog recommends both native and Utah-adapted plants and will consider the user’s location when recommending plant species.
To create predictability for demand, the app’s preorder feature allows users to order their plants months in advance, giving growers time and data to scale their products and meet consumer demand.
What should a “Utah lawn” look like?
One of the biggest considerations when designing a Utah landscape is paying attention to subenvironments, as the amount of rainfall varies throughout the state and different ecosystems require different landscape strategies.
Driving through a St. George neighborhood, you’ll mostly see rock gardens and cacti with occasional green turf. In contrast, take a spin through a Utah County suburb. You’ll likely be met with large, green lawns and lush landscaping. But should you?
Urban landscape irrigation currently represents 50-65 percent of the annual municipal water use, and much of it is applied in excess of the plant’s needs, according to the Center for Water-Efficient Landscaping at Utah State University. To help with this, Utah Water Ways aims to help Utahns collectively remove and replace several hundred million square feet of lawn with waterwise landscaping.
“We want to prioritize turf that serves a recreational purpose,” Bee says. “For home landscapes, … no more than 35 percent of the landscape should be lawn.”
Over half of the participants in a first-of-its-kind survey conducted by Envision Utah believe that Utahns need to do their part to conserve water by making changes at home. The respondents ranked water as the second-highest key issue “extremely” important to Utah’s future — just behind housing and cost of living — and 76 percent were concerned about Utah’s water situation.
Consumer trends at Glover Nursery support those statistics, as Ryan says more homeowners have been asking for tough, adaptable, easy-to-grow plants for their landscapes in the last five years. Ryan’s advice is that the most important principle of landscape design is “putting the right plant in the right place.”
Waterwise landscaping doesn’t mean replacing all Utah lawns with rock gardens — but it does mean considering location, plant species and irrigation needs when designing them. For those struggling with transitioning their lawns, Regan remembers fondly a sign that her grandpa used to have in his nursery office: “If at first you don’t succeed, grow, grow again.”