Lawn Painting to cope with the drought. (Austin: HOA, live)

[OpenD]

Good grief, even "rainy" Seattle is dying from this drought, the worst in 56 years, and is turning to painting their brown lawns green.

Austin may have dodged a bullet with the recent rains, and the city lifting watering restrictions, but if lawns brown up again, do you think this is an option for you? (I'm thinking anybody in an HOA is gonna say no.)

Turf painting spreads as drought ravages lawns - seattlepi.com

[BevoLJ]

In Texas brown lawns are just a part of the deal. lol

[Pammyd]

Originally Posted by OpenD

Good grief, even "rainy" Seattle is dying from this drought, the worst in 56 years, and is turning to painting their brown lawns green.
Austin may have dodged a bullet with the recent rains, and the city lifting watering restrictions, but if lawns brown up again, do you think this is an option for you? (I'm thinking anybody in an HOA is gonna say no.)
Turf painting spreads as drought ravages lawns - seattlepi.com

Never heard of such a thing! Grass is pretty tough and does bounce back without putting paint on it. Don't cut it while it is all brown, water if you can at night. My fear is that the paint will end up killing the grass permanently as underneath all that brown grass, believe it or not, the grass is still alive. We had some seriously hot weather here in Conn. as well and with just a few days of rain and more coming today, our grass has bounced right back. No paint!!

[capcat]

I've never heard of it either. I'd never consider painting my lawn. Xeriscape is a more worthy goal in dry climates.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Pammyd

Never heard of such a thing! Grass is pretty tough and does bounce back without putting paint on it.

As the article mentions, golf courses are using it, so obviously the "paint"... maybe it should be called dye?... is not harmful to grass.

Maybe it's akin to that green fertilizer slurry containing grass seeds that highway crews spray onto areas where they've been doing earth moving in the medians or on the sides, in order to get a quick-start patch of grass. But that has always seemed a wimpy green to me, whereas these pics look more of a dark green.

Dunno. I'm constantly amazed at the time, effort, and money people put into trying to maintain green lawns in arrid climates.

[Trainwreck20]

We keep our trees watered, which lowers the load on the grass. If it gets so bad that we can't keep it alive, so be it. Our HOA has already mentioned that they will not attempt to enforce the grass rules once it becomes futile, so we will just have a nice dirt/dead grass patch eventually w/o rain. OTOH, our early rains and a few well-timed showers have kept it really, really happy - I think the last few years of drought are re-training it .

[Cummy]

They would never allow that in my area. How trashy!

[EzPeterson]

Originally Posted by Cummy

They would never allow that in my area. How trashy!

Not if done right. And what's better? A dry yard or a dry reservoir?

[Trainwreck20]

A dry yard or a dry reservoir?

Eh, bad choice...you can stop watering AND not paint your yard. It really is a bit weird to pretend your yard is not dead when it is.....

[kittenlittle]

It's like Weekend at Bernie's with your lawn!

Painting your lawn is just tacky. No one is going to fault you on a dead lawn when everyone else has brown grass, too.