Front of a non-descript suburban house. A crispy yellow saint augustine lawn covers the front yard.

So here is the beginning. This is what my yard looked like when I applied for the City of Austin’s Landscape Conversion Incentive Program. By November 15th I’m expected to rip out all the grass and replace it with something. I cannot plant replacement plants yet.


Plan for the front yard. On front left are blooming groundcover, grasses, butterfly garden, trees. It is edged by cactus clumps. On the right are grasses and a butterly garden. More cactus clumps and two mequite trees.

One of the big issues I had with this conversion is that there are very few examples of entire front yard conversions. Most xeric designs involve turf with bordering xeric flowerbeds. Very few are a large standard suburban lot with no grass. And most of those are in Arizona and look a bit spare. So this plan is very much an experiment.

At this point we are still very open to conversion ideas. Feel free to attach any photos or ideas you find inspiring in the comments.


Spent the morning pulling back out the existing brick border and concrete pavers. I think those pavers were cast in place. They’re super heavy and weighted oddly.

A front path with no front path. Just dirt in the shape of a path.

The second picture is my boneyard after putting everything back there. The majority of the pavers and yellow bricks on the left came out of the front yard this morning.

Two stacks of gray concrete pavers. In the background a stack of yellow decorative bricks.

This afternoon we’re going to try to get the landscape fabric and new pavers down and start pulling out grass.


So in the spirit of doing landscaping projects, I noticed yesterday that there was a massive dead branch in one tree in the backyard. Last night we had a rainstorm and that tree basically appears to have exploded. It fell apart. So we spent today scrambling to find someone to cut it down. And worrying about the cost.

A tree that has been nearly split in two pulling down a fence.

And I moved almost a ton of pavers today. At the end I was cleaning up. We had one extra paver and it completely fell apart while I was attempting to lift it. Lovely cut and bruise on my middle finger. Fun day. But we got a bunch of grass out. We got all the pavers moved. We got some free river rock lined up. Tomorrow I have to level the pavers and move out some more grass.

Pavers on top of landscape fabric looking horribly unlevel.


A view of a blue Scio xB car parked in a driveway. It is flanked by a suburban front yard with some of the grass pulled out.

Not a lot of interesting work yesterday. Both my mom and dad came over and helped pull up some grass. We’re now about ¾ done with the South side of the yard.


We went out to Julie’s parent’s land in Evant this weekend. We managed to secure some free river rock, that just requires us to load it into a trailer, and then our neighbor is driving it over to our house. That loading is quite a lot of work, though. We’re probably a little over halfway through and that first picture is how much we’ve done. A lot more work than we were expecting. But Julie and the girls helped.

A pile of granite rock on a driveway.

While in Evant we picked up a bunch of yucca and cactus. Not much variety out there. Obviously grazing has left pretty much only stuff that cows and deer don’t eat. But we brought some back to p ot and get ready for the front yard.
5 twist-leaf yuccas in ports and 3 prickly pears in pots sitting on top of a dead flowerbed full of asian jasmine.

This week I’m focusing on leveling the path. I’m work mornings and nights. This project was bigger than I expected. Gotta rent a sod cutter and buy some decomposed granite for this weekend.


Leveled pavers on top of landscape fabric.

Went third round of leveling pavers and got edging in around path. Gonna push to get river rock in the path and remove the rest of the grass.


A front path made up of square concrete flag stones filled with white granite rocks. Edges with metal. View towards the street.

So after much leveling finally got to start shoveling stone. This is how it looks after an hour of work this morning. It needs a lot of cleaning up, but it’s definitely starting to resemble something and looking sharp.

A front path made up of square concrete flag stones filled with white granite rocks. Edges with metal. View towards the house.

On a sad note while hammering in edging this weekend my trusty rubber mallet splintered in two. It was both a gardening and cooking tool as I had used it to flatten many a chicken breast and pork chop. It will be missed.


A front yard, mailbox in the foreground. A tiny cactus, and no grass.

It’s gone! Finally all the grass is gone. I’ve still been working on the yard, but mostly with the fiddly little stuff that doesn’t take fantastic before and after pictures. I ended up renting a sod cutter after my neighbors generously offered me the use of their truck. It took a bit to figure out, and unfortunately couldn’t be used on the parts I’d already started removing grass on, but it took out most of the rest of the front yard in less than 2 hours. A bit of a pain if you’re by yourself as you have to roll up a row before you can start the next or everything gets tangled in the cutter. I also now have a massive pile of dead grass in my backyard.

After that I spent Saturday and Sunday just cleaning up all the patches that had been missed. Which took quite a bit of work. I’m working on getting my sod and decomposed granite delivered tomorrow, and still need to work on getting the steel edging to go down hill, but things are actually starting to look like the end is in sight.


dump truck dropping decomposed granite

steel edged yard with dirt

finished steel edged yard with dirt

finished steel segments with slope to the curb which looks unfinished

So today I took another day off work. We had the granite and mulch ordered. We had a lot of edging. I started out cleaning up the rest of the river rock and putting it in that weird area to the right of our front door. It looks nicer over there, but still lacks any real purpose. We need a fountain or piece of art or something.

My dad came over (he rocks) and we started on edging the garden boxes. We knocked the entire West side of the yard out before lunch. We went out for lunch, and picked up some more edging pieces and the RIGHT landscape fabric from the Muller Home Depot. I cleaned out the Woodward Home Depot yesterday morning. In case you’re looking for brown steel edging corners.

We came back, and ate, then finished the East side after the dump-truck came. Then using kitty litter buckets left by the previous inhabitants of this home we trucked all the mulch into the two garden beds. Endured some more taunting from neighbors (you are going to put plants in there right?) and more confusion from Julie. But it’s getting close.

I’ve just got to have faith that people are going to like it once the plants are in. You people are really bad at visualizing landscapes without plants.