Most HOAs in the Denver metro are overpaying for landscaping that looks mediocre at best and dead at worst — and the reason is almost always the same: they hired a general maintenance company instead of one that knows how to grow things in Colorado.

Generic landscape maintenance companies are good at one thing — showing up on schedule. Weekly mowing. Seasonal blowing. Irrigation that runs whether it rained yesterday or not. They optimize for labor hours and route efficiency, not for the performance of the plants they're supposed to be tending. In a climate like Denver's, that's the wrong model.

This is an argument for HOAs to think differently about who they hire — and what they're actually buying when they sign a landscaping contract. It's also the work our commercial and HOA landscaping service is built around.

What Generic Landscape Companies Optimize For (It's Not Your Plants)

A standard commercial landscape maintenance contract is built around labor time, not outcomes. The company books routes. They send a crew. They mow what needs mowing, blow what needs blowing, and leave. Whether the turf is thriving or barely surviving isn't the metric — service completion is.

That model works fine in climates where grass grows reliably with rain. Denver gets about 14 inches of precipitation a year. Kentucky bluegrass — the default turf in most HOA common areas — needs far more than that to stay green through a Denver summer. Every inch of that gap has to come from irrigation, which your HOA pays for.

A generic maintenance company will keep that irrigation running. They'll overseed the dead patches. They'll apply fertilizer on schedule. They'll mow eight to fifteen times a season. And at the end of a hot July, your common areas will still look stressed, because the underlying problem — planting the wrong thing — never gets solved. It just gets managed.

A xeriscape-focused landscaping company approaches the same site differently: what plants actually belong here, what the soil needs, how to reduce the watering burden without sacrificing appearance, and how to build a landscape that gets better over time rather than requiring constant intervention to stay alive.

The Real Budget Impact on HOA Common Areas

Landscape-related expenses — water, maintenance contracts, irrigation repairs, turf replacement — are among the biggest line items in most HOA operating budgets. For communities with substantial common areas, they're often the largest controllable expense.

For an HOA with large common turf areas, the recurring costs look like this:

Water: the biggest seasonal cost, and the most exposed to drought rules and rate increases
Maintenance contract: weekly mowing through the season plus seasonal services
Irrigation repairs and upgrades: Unpredictable, but constant — head replacements, valve failures, controller issues
Turf replacement: When sections fail under drought or heat stress, reseeding or resodding adds unbudgeted cost mid-season

Those costs repeat every year with no natural endpoint. Converting common areas to native plant and xeriscape landscaping doesn't eliminate landscaping costs, but it changes the recurring profile: established native plantings run on a handful of seasonal visits instead of weekly mowing, they're watered by drip instead of spray, and there's no turf to replace.

The upfront conversion cost is real. How fast it pays back depends on how much turf you convert, your water provider's rates, and your current maintenance contract — run those numbers for your community rather than trusting a generic payback figure.

It also matters that decorative turf on common property is on its way out regardless. Under Colorado's SB24-005, starting January 1, 2026, local governments can't allow new nonfunctional turf, artificial turf, or invasive plants on common-interest-community common property — the same rule covers commercial property, medians, and parking lots (SB24-005). When a failing common-area lawn gets torn out, it can't come back as new sod or artificial turf. It comes back as xeriscape. (Turf that residents actually use for recreation — a play lawn, a picnic area — counts as functional and isn't covered.)

DogTuff, Native Grasses, and What Actually Grows Here

One of the most common objections HOA boards raise to reducing turf is function: residents use grass areas. Dogs run in them. Kids play on them. Not everything can be replaced with decomposed granite and shrubs.

That's a reasonable objection — and it's one that a xeriscape-literate landscaper can solve, where a generic maintenance company probably can't even engage with it.

DogTuff Grass

Dog Tuff™ is a sterile hybrid African dogtooth grass (Cynodon 'PWIN04S') introduced through Plant Select, named for how well it holds up in yards with dogs. It's drought tolerant, with moderate-to-xeric water needs, and handles wear that would tear up bluegrass (Plant Select). It's a warm-season grass, so it greens up in late spring and goes dormant and tan by mid-autumn — worth acknowledging honestly. For the parts of a common area residents actually use — the dog run, the play lawn — it's one of the most practical low-water options in Colorado. Most generic maintenance companies won't even suggest it.

Blue Grama and Buffalo Grass

The native short-grass prairie species that covered the Front Range before development are low, slow-growing, and adapted to exactly the precipitation patterns Denver actually gets. Blue grama grass, in particular, looks striking — fine-textured, with curled seed heads that catch light in late summer. It handles alkaline clay and needs far less water than bluegrass. Native grasses like blue grama and buffalograss also aren't what SB24-005 means by "turf," which makes them a good fit for common areas that need a grassy look without the water. Mass plantings in HOA entry corridors and low-traffic common areas perform better in August than any bluegrass installation can.

Native Perennial Plantings

Entry monuments, parking island borders, fence lines, and building perimeters are low-function turf areas that exist primarily for appearance. These are ideal candidates for native Colorado plants — penstemons, rabbitbrush, Apache plume, blanket flower, and ornamental grasses — that bloom in sequence from May through October, need little to no supplemental water once established, and look better than struggling bluegrass in every month except possibly early June.

The Appearance Argument — Which Is Actually the Most Important One

Budget arguments alone don't move HOA boards. Appearance does — because appearance is what residents complain about, and complaints are what boards respond to.

Here's the thing: well-designed xeriscape common areas look better than stressed bluegrass. Not in a "nature is beautiful" abstract sense — in a concrete, year-round, curb-appeal sense.

Denver bluegrass looks its worst in the months it needs to look its best. Late July, August: heat stress, browning, patchy recovery from any irrigation misses or drought stages. That's when out-of-town guests arrive for summer visits. That's when prospective buyers are touring properties. A community with golden-brown turf in August and a five-figure maintenance contract is getting poor value on both counts.

Native plant common areas hit their peak in the same window — late summer is when rabbitbrush goes gold, when ornamental grasses catch September light, when the seed heads of blue grama are at their most striking. The landscape looks like it belongs to Colorado because it does.

Done properly — with defined edges, structured plant masses, intentional boulder placement, and clean hardscape transitions — a xeriscape common area reads as high-end, intentional landscaping. Not as neglect. The difference is design competence, which generic maintenance companies typically don't offer.

Pollinators, Community Interest, and the Amenity Value Nobody Talks About

Something happens in HOA communities when the landscaping actually supports local ecology: residents notice, and they care.

A common area planted with native perennials draws pollinators — native bees, hummingbirds, checkerspot butterflies — in ways that monoculture bluegrass simply doesn't. That's not just an ecological footnote. It's a tangible, visible community amenity. Residents who watch a hummingbird work through a penstemon planting at the entry monument feel differently about where they live than residents who walk past another rectangle of stressed turf.

A native planting gives residents something to notice — what's blooming, what's coming next, which birds are working the seed heads. That's the opposite of the low-grade frustration brown August turf generates.

And for prospective buyers, well-kept drought-tolerant common areas read as an HOA that manages its water and its budget sensibly.

What Colorado Law Actually Says About HOA Xeriscape

Two laws matter here, and they cover different ground.

Owners' lots — C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5. Colorado's HOA statute bars associations from prohibiting xeriscape or drought-tolerant landscaping on an owner's lot (the protection was expanded in 2021 by HB21-1229 to cover nonvegetative landscaping and artificial turf). HOAs can still adopt reasonable design and aesthetic guidelines — plant type, number, and placement, and hardscape — and may limit artificial turf to back yards (C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5). So a board can shape how xeriscape looks in the community, but it can't say no to it.

Common areas — SB24-005. As covered above, new nonfunctional turf and artificial turf are off the table on HOA common property from 2026 (SB24-005). Any common-area conversion should be designed as xeriscape or native planting from the start.

On incentives: rebate programs for HOA and commercial accounts vary by water provider and change year to year, so check your provider's current offerings before you budget — and note that some programs require approval before installation. We'll tell you which programs apply to your community.

What to Look For When Evaluating HOA Landscaping Bids

If your HOA is evaluating landscaping contracts — at renewal or for a conversion project — here are the questions that separate companies that understand Colorado from companies that don't:

Can they name the plants they're proposing?

Any bid for Front Range landscaping should include a specific plant list with rationale. "Native perennials" isn't a plant list. Ask what species, why those species for your soil and sun exposure, and how they'll look in August. A company that can answer this fluently knows what they're doing.

Do they understand water zones?

Putting drought-tolerant plants on the same irrigation zone as any remaining turf is one of the most common errors in HOA landscape conversions. The watering requirements are incompatible — you'll either overwater the natives or underwater the turf. Ask how irrigation zones will be managed in their proposal.

Have they done HOA work before?

HOA projects have constraints that residential projects don't — architectural review processes, phasing across multiple budget cycles, resident communication, and the politics of changing shared spaces. Ask for references from HOA clients, not just residential homeowners. Many of the same questions apply on the commercial side; see our guide to commercial landscaping in Denver.

Do they know the rebate programs?

A company working in your interest will check what your water provider currently offers for HOA accounts and bring it up early, before the budget is set — not after the work is done.

Do they know SB24-005?

If a bid for a common-area renovation includes new decorative sod or artificial turf, ask how that squares with SB24-005. A contractor who knows Colorado's rules will design the conversion as xeriscape from the start.

The Pitch, Plainly Stated

HOAs in Denver are managing common areas in a semi-arid climate with a landscaping model designed for somewhere wetter. The costs are high, the results are marginal, and the typical fix — a new maintenance contract with a different generic company — doesn't change the underlying problem.

A landscaper who understands native plants, xeriscape design, DogTuff and native grass alternatives, and the specific conditions of the Front Range will deliver better results at lower long-term cost. Fewer mows, less water, fewer repair calls, and a landscape that improves as plants establish rather than degrading under annual stress.

The communities doing this well aren't sacrificing appearance for conservation. They've figured out that in Colorado, those two things point in the same direction.

Ready to Upgrade Your HOA's Landscaping?

Xeris designs and installs xeriscape and low-water landscapes for HOAs and commercial properties across Denver and the surrounding metro. We design to your HOA's guidelines and to Colorado's turf rules. Request an estimate and we'll walk your common areas with the board.

HOA Landscaping in Denver: Why You Need a Xeriscape Specialist, Not a Generic Maintenance Company