Landscaping in Lehi, Utah

Most Lehi landscaping starts with a blank lot: a new home, graded dirt, a sprinkler stub and a builder’s deadline or HOA rule about finishing the front yard. The plan has to satisfy the city — street trees in new residential, xeriscapes with at least 70% plant cover rather than gravel — and the water bill, because Lehi has installed more than 12,000 secondary meters and will charge by use. That points to smaller lawns where they’re used, drip-irrigated beds with drought-tolerant plants, rock and mulch where nothing needs to grow, and turf for side yards and play areas.

Traverse Mountain yards are a different job from valley yards. Three hundred feet higher, windier and steeper, they need retaining and terracing, drainage that carries runoff away from the foundation, and plants that handle exposure. Valley lots near Utah Lake are flatter but sit on clay that holds water; we amend beds and grade for drainage. Both get Lehi’s short growing season and hot, dry summers.

For established yards in Lehi’s early-2000s neighborhoods, the common project is lawn reduction — converting a park strip or a front lawn to water-wise planting through the Utah Water Savers program — and refreshing beds that were planted twenty years ago. Because EKN also does sprinklers, sod, turf, fencing and concrete, a Lehi landscape can be built as one project in the right order.