When Jessie Myers of Thornton looked out her window, she saw a kind of personal battlefield. The homeowner was waging a war to keep her grass green — and she was losing.

“We just bought our house a year ago and the lawn is south-facing,” Myers said. “And we just could not keep it alive for the life of us, and honestly just refused to put any more water onto it because it wasn’t doing any good.”

So Myers quit the fight. She dug up every blade and planted a new garden — one that loves the sun and needs much less water than a traditional lawn.

That’s something homeowners along the Front Range are doing at a record pace, according to Resource Central, a conservation nonprofit based in Boulder.

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