Ground and Grade, How Much Yard Can Be Grass, and Sod or Turf

Both are among the turf grasses on the City of El Paso Approved Plant and Tree List, which takes hybrid Bermudagrass in seedless selections only and notes buffalograss for low fertilizer needs, no required mowing and going dormant in drought.

Bermuda is a warm-season grass. It grows hard in heat and full sun, takes foot traffic and recovers from wear, thins out in heavy shade, and goes tan and dormant through the cold months. That shapes both where it goes and when. A lawn on the north side of a two-story house or under a dense tree canopy is usually the wrong place for it, and a lawn laid well inside the warm season has the most time to root before its first winter, as the timing question on the sod page sets out with El Paso's freeze dates.

El Paso Water's seasonal chart for established grass waters Bermuda to a depth of 6 - 10 inches: 1 - 2 times a week in spring, 2 - 3 times a week in summer, 2 - 3 times a month in fall and once a month in winter. Cool-season fescue and rye take the same depth twice a week in fall and 1 - 2 times a week in winter. Of the two, the City list carries only perennial ryegrass, which it rates high water and notes prefers cool summers.

Loose, workable soil on a grade that sends water away from the house. Sod roots only as far as the ground lets it, and under many El Paso lawns the ground is compacted fill, sandy soil with little organic matter, or both. The Hueco soil series, which the USDA soil survey established from a type location in El Paso County, Texas, is loamy fine sand and fine sandy loam over indurated caliche at about 30 inches. So the old lawn is dug out, the soil is loosened and worked, and compost goes in where the ground is sandy or compacted.

The grade comes before the grass. The residential code El Paso adopted, the 2021 International Residential Code (El Paso Municipal Code 18.10.020), calls for lots graded so surface water drains away from foundation walls, with the grade falling at least 6 inches within the first 10 feet (IRC R401.3). A lawn laid on ground that falls toward the slab waters the foundation every time it is watered, so the fall is set in the bare soil, before any sod is ordered.

Height is the other half. The soil is finished below the walks and the patio slab by the thickness of the sod, so the finished lawn sits flush with the paving or just under it. Against a framed stucco wall the same code keeps the weep screed at least 4 inches above the earth or 2 inches above paved areas (IRC R703.7.2.1), and new soil and sod stay below that line so the base of the wall can still drain.

In a running bond, rolled and soaked the day it goes down, with El Paso Water's establishment permit requested before the sod arrives. Rolling presses the roots into the soil so no air pocket is left under the pad.

Daily watering in those first weeks takes that permit, and who can apply, for how long and where is answered in the daily watering question on the sod page. Without it, new sod lives on the regular schedule, and the code is plain that potential damage to landscaping is never an economic hardship that justifies a variance (EPMC 15.13.060(B)), so the permit comes before the delivery, not after the lawn browns.

Once the lawn is established, the 6 - 10 inch depth on El Paso Water's seasonal chart is guidance for the grass, not a design for any watering system. The system itself is not Sage's scope: it is designed and installed by a TCEQ-licensed irrigator, with an irrigator license number beginning with LI, under a contract you hold directly, as the landscaping page's section on what stays outside Sage's scope explains.

On a house whose building permit was issued after June 1, 2002, no more than half of the landscaped area, front and back yard combined. El Paso Municipal Code 15.13.130 sets that cap for new residential sites and keeps turf grass out of parkways, narrow strips and slopes of one to three or steeper unless it is watered by subsurface irrigation. If your house was permitted after that date, the lawn you have, or the one you want, has a ceiling.

An HOA can shape a lawn but cannot ban a water-wise yard. Texas Property Code 202.007 bars an association from prohibiting drought-resistant landscaping or water-conserving natural turf, lets it require a plan for review, and lets it restrict new turf to water-conserving turf, so the grass is chosen with the deed restrictions open.

Grass earns its water where people use it, and the Texas A&M AgriLife office for El Paso County names areas near a pool and pet and children's play areas among those places. A narrow side yard, a parkway or a slope usually does better as something else. Artificial turf stays green and usable with no watering, and how it compares with rock and planting is set out on the artificial turf page. Decomposed granite, rock and desert planting are on Sage's xeriscape and desert landscaping page, and one yard can carry all of them when each goes where it works.