Keith Umbreit is no stranger to gardening. Back when he was living in Riverside, he was a devoted rose grower and member of the local rosarian society.
“I had 69 rosebushes in my yard,” he recalled. “Every kind of tea roses, and vining roses, and hybrid roses. I had them all.”
But when Umbreit bought his current home in an Oceanside suburb in 2013, he gave up roses.
When Kim Chapman and her husband Don Gross were tired of their lawn, and the brown grass and the water bills that accompanied it, they got paid to remove their grass. They were one of 150 households who have benefited from the City of Sonoma’s turf removal rebate since it launched in 2013.
The program has been able to drastically reduce the amount of water used by residents who remove their lawns, since nearly half of a home’s water bill can come from maintaining lawns, Sonoma City Water Manager Mike Brett said.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
