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Gardening: Five Mile Prairie homeowner saves 190,000 gallons of water in Spokanescape program

City of Spokane water department efficiency specialist Kyle J. Merritt talks Sept. 22 with homeowner Shannon Wade while surrounded with “waterwise landscaping” in the front yard of her Spokane home. (Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review)
City of Spokane water department efficiency specialist Kyle J. Merritt talks Sept. 22 with homeowner Shannon Wade while surrounded with “waterwise landscaping” in the front yard of her Spokane home. (Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review)Buy a print of this photo
By Pat Munts For The Spokesman-Review

Let’s face it, 190,000 is a large number, be it people, dollars or in Shannon Wade’s case, gallons of water. This is the amount of water she saved on her Spokane city water bill between the meter readings for August 2020 and August 2021.

The reason?

She took part in the city of Spokane’s SpokaneScape program last spring and tore out a thousand square feet of manicured lawn and replaced it with drought tolerant plants watered with drip irrigation. To put some perspective on 190,000 gallons of water, imagine 190 of the city’s water trucks lined up along your curb and everyone else’s around the block to dump water on your lawn.

“I bought this house in October to simplify my living and get everything all on one floor. The previous owners had had this immaculate lawn for 30 years,” Wade said of her home on Five Mile Prairie. “I hated mowing my old Shadle-area lawn in the first place, so why should I keep this up.”

She was aware of the SpokaneScape program, so she applied through the city Water Department’s SpokaneScape.org website.

“The SpokaneScape program has been in Spokane since 2018,” said Kyle Merritt, the city Water Department’s water efficiency specialist who walked Wade through the planning and approval process for the program. “For people accepted into the program, the city will give them a one-time 50-cent-per-square-foot credit on their water bill for the removal of up to 1,000 square feet of lawn.”

The minimum for the program is 300 square feet.

Wade applied to the program in March, worked with Merritt to get plant selection approvals and selected a program-approved landscape professional to design and install the garden by mid-June. The landscaper removed the existing front lawn and controlled weeds, laid out a new drip irrigation system and then planted an assortment of drought tolerant plants including several colors of yarrow, Autumn Joy sedum, salvia, lamb’s ears, lavender, catmint and other low growing perennials.

Even with our extremely hot and dry summer, by late September, the plants had settled in and were blooming profusely.

“I get people driving and stopping by to look at the garden and ask questions. My neighbor down the street liked it so much, she is going to join the program next year,” Wade said. “It was worth every dollar I spent on it.”

The program has grown about 25% each year since its inception, Merritt said.

“In 2021, we have finished 60 projects and have another 30 that will be finished by the end of this year,” he said. “With all the new people moving to town, the program is only going to grow.”

For more information on the program, go to SpokaneScape.org and download the SpokaneScape Guidebook. The guidebook will walk you through the application, design and construction steps and includes lists of plants and certified landscape professionals. You can do the work yourself. One caveat: You must be a city of Spokane resident to use the program.

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Pat Munts can be reached at pat@inlandnwgardening.com