Fabulous potential…but why would you want to introduce fake grass??

Some idea to go

or with flower bed

We can only water lawns two times a week. My husband has got most of our plants on drip irrigation now so we can water those more. The artificial turf keeps the dust down and it is starting to grow on me. We did it in our front yard and with some real plants it looks good in my opinion. I am going to use some rocks. I would do more with rocks, but our back neighbors have lots of trees on the fence line and the rocks just get filled with leaves, etc. We would like to keep the maintenance low.

Thanks Celery for the ideas. The plant in front of the iceberg roses (in the back along fence line) is a pygmy palm so it will get about 8 ft tall. It will be a 3 or 4 branch tree once it is full grown. I have Indian hawthorns along our back fence that will get about 4 ft high. Our fence is about 6 ft. so they will almost reach the top of the fence.

Artificial turf is scalding hot to walk on in hot climates. Worse than concrete. Solution? People water it to cool it down! I'd stick with the concrete which you can just sweep off. AT is much harder to keep clean. I also worry about the environmental impact of disposing of acres of green plastic when the AT gets old and ratty.

I hope mojavemaria checks in. She has great experience and suggestions for waterwise gardening.

Its great that you are reducing your landscape water use! I confess to not being a fan of artificial turf and worry about its ecological consequences but understand your concern about leaf litter.

There are rock mulch landscapes everywhere here in Las vegas and leaf blowers are used to clean debris from them very successfully. If you put in DG or rock fines you can even rake up leaves and twigs also.

Hope you will consider these beautiful, natural and long lasting ground covers:)

Thanks for all the comments. I have come up with a design I like. I will try to delete the post. Thanks again.

Please share your design I would love to se it!

Thanks Dig Doug's Design. I really like the design. I am rethinking some of the ideas I had planned on.

It's a really nice yard. I'm curious what made you want to change it. Is it just because you are getting the new turf?

I notice that with the exception of the topiary it seems to be low maintenance. I assume you don't want anything needing a lot of shearing or dead heading. How do you feel about gray plants or succulents?

I had already reduced the real grass back to about where the artificial turf is going. Our gas lawn mower went out, so we decided to go with artificial in the back yard since we like it in the front. I am going to keep it simple to reduce yard maintenance.

My plan is to get two more Indianian Hawthorns plants for the back fence to fill it in. Those will get about 4 ft tall so they will cover most of the fence. I am going to let the topiary turn into small trees. It is hard to tell but when they cut back our neighbors trees the back side of the topiary took a beating. Between the topiary trees I am going to do either three red yucca plants or another lantana(yellow or purple) in the middle with two red yucca plants in front. I will use three otto quast spanish lavender in front of the pygmy palm. The square space closest to our patio I will put two wheeler's dwarf japanese pittosporum in front of the agapanthus and then three variegated society garlic plant in front of those.

It should be pretty easy to keep up. The lantana, lavender, and society garlic plants bloom almost all year in my area.

I live in SoCal. I'm not an expert, but I did help a designer figure out my front yard and I've done a lot of work in the backyard too, so I've thought about it. Here are a bunch of my kind of random thoughts:

I don't like the artificial turf, but if you must, you must. Did you consider perhaps a decomposed granite pathway instead of a patch of green?

My favorite inspiration for SoCal landscape comes from Scott Shrader. Here are two inspiration photos with Mediterranean plantings (like olive trees for shaded paths), and low-water no-mow grass:

I think you need a big shade tree somewhere back there. Maybe an olive tree, but I see you might like the tropical look.

Note in the 2nd picture how a change in elevation was achieved in a flat space. I'm not a designer, but I aspire to see how a yard can have pathways to a destination, like a picnic table, or a fountain. An elevation change can really "make" the scene.

Don't forget about some strategic lighting so the whole thing can be enjoyed after dark, even from inside the house.

I love the Indian Hawthorne, but with your yard, I'd want something taller up against the fence, like Ligustrum Texanum or even taller, like a Hollywood style hedge to give you more privacy.

I don't like rock mulch at all because it's harder to pull weeds out of it, though it is more fire-retardant up against the foundation of the house.

Thanks Mrs S. for the pictures. We have some lights, large rocks, and a bird bath we will move back into place once we have the plants in.

We have a decomposed granite pathway on our side yard were our orange tree, avocado tree, and garden is located. It seems to scratch the floors, so we decided against it in the main area of the back yard. I do like the clean look it gives.

We had larger shrubs along the back fence but replace them so the tree trimmers could get to that area easier. Our neighbor's bougainvillea plant climbs up their trees and hangs halfway into our yard, so we have them trimmed every other year. The bougainvillea plants are pretty but man the thorns on them are bad even with gloves.