Have you reduced the lawn on your property?

With the official start of spring, National Audubon Society encourages homeowners to conserve water by replacing unneeded lawn areas with native plants. You'll find action plans and online resources via those links.

In its Audubon at Home program, NAS says:

Our choices of plants, landscape materials and design, and garden practices have an enormous impact on our outdoor water use. Lawns require two-and-a-half to four times more water than shrubs and trees. Indeed, it is estimated that in the course of a single year, a typical suburban lawn uses 10,000 gallons of water over and above that provided by rainfall.

That's a sobering thought, particularly in this dressed-up desert in which I live.