Once, when asked how much water a buffalograss lawn would require to stay alive, turfgrass expert Dr. Bill Knoop, now retired from Texas A&M, quipped it would need just about as much as a buffalo can give it. Actually, his language was more colorful than that; use your imagination.

Landscape pro Forest Hill shows off California-bred 'UC Verde' buffalograss

For more than a generation, a handful of turfgrass breeders and other experts have touted the considerable environmental benefits of buffalograss for home lawns and commercial properties. Even so, property owners — even in the Southern Plains and the arid Southwest where the grass is best suited — have been slow to adopt the species. Historically, property owners have viewed traditional lawn grasses to be greener and lusher than buffalograss.

But greener and lusher are terms that don't hold the cache they once did. With increasing attention being given to turfgrass as a so-called “water hog,” is it time for landscape professionals to begin promoting the use of buffalograss, which requires significantly less water and chemical inputs to remain green and healthy than traditional lawn grasses?

Forest Hill, a longtime longtime landscape and irrigation professional in Ontario, CA, thinks so.

Hill is the founder and operator Landscape Design, Inc., and its new division, SWAN (Smart Water Application Now). Through SWAN Hill offers a range of progressive water-efficient landscape irrigation services, and he's very high on buffalograss. Not just any buffalograss, but a variety jointly developed by turfgrass experts at the University of Calilfornia (UC) Davis and UC Riverside. The official name of the grass is ‘UC Verde', and it's the only commercially available buffalograss breed in California for California lawns.

In fact, Hill is so enthusiastic about this particular grass that he plugged it (It can't be established from seed.) into the front yard of his attractive home/headquarters. As the plugs were only two months old when we visited on Monday, Aug. 24, they hadn't had time to spread and fill in. But what we saw was green and attractive and was certainly more inviting than landscapes composed of rocks and desert plants. Hill expects his lawn, once the grass spreads, to require significantly less water than the tall fescue it replaced, and to be just as attractive, even figuring that it will go dormant and brown from December into late February.

This buffalograss lawn, started from plugs, will require another month to fill out completely

“Once the buffalograss gets established, it will use about 70 percent less water than the tall fescue, and I will only have to mow it about once a month,” said Hill.

To further reduce water use on the lawn in from of his home, Hill took out a 4-ft. wide strip of turf surrounding the buffalograss, eliminating another 1200 sq. ft. that no longer needs watering. He also replaced part of the landscape in his yard with a patch of artificial turf, again as a demonstration of what can be done from a landscaping standpoint to meet California's stricter water conservation rules.

But it was his enthusiasm for buffalograss and the promise that it holds for providing property owners in our Southern Plains and arid U.S. Southwest for having green, living turfgrass lawns and still conserving water that heartened us most.

As home owners and commercial property owners become acquainted with the several improved varieties of buffalograss it's our guess that they will adopt them and grow to appreciate them as alternatives to more stark desert-style landscapes.