Landscaping
The answer isn't in a textbook. It's in your CC&Rs, and this lesson shows you exactly where to look.
Your CC&Rs decide who maintains what. Association common area, entrances, clubhouse grounds, community green space, is almost always the association's job. What happens on an individual lot depends on your documents: some require owners to maintain their own yards, others shift front-yard upkeep to the association for a uniform look. Either way, federal guidance says the board should not use those covenants to lock owners into high-water landscaping.
Common area is the association's job. Your lot depends on your documents.
Start with a simple split. Common area, the entrance monument, the clubhouse lawn, the pool deck planters, belongs to everyone, so the association maintains it. What happens inside a single owner's property line is a different question, and the answer lives in the same section of the CC&Rs that defines common area and limited common element.
Some communities require every owner to maintain their own yard to a standard the board enforces through violation notices. Others, especially attached-home and condo communities, have the association maintain front yards for a consistent streetscape and leave fenced backyards entirely to the owner. Check your CC&Rs' maintenance responsibility article before assuming either pattern applies to you.
Your covenants shouldn't force anyone to waste water
Landscaping rules are also an architectural review matter: most CC&Rs require board approval before an owner rips out a lawn. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends associations review their landscaping covenants so owners have room to choose water-conscious landscaping rather than being locked into turf grass they cannot afford to water.
The same guidance points to a specific fix for common-area water bills. A standard irrigation timer waters on a fixed clock regardless of weather. A weather-based controller adjusts the schedule to local conditions, and a soil-moisture controller skips watering when the ground is already wet. EPA reports that swapping a clock-based controller for a WaterSense labeled one saves an average home water use on the order of thousands of gallons a year, savings that scale up fast across a community's common-area beds.
Trees, irrigation, and ponds run on their own clocks
"Landscaping" is really several separate maintenance items wearing one label. Mature trees near buildings or walkways get reassessed on their own cycle. Irrigation systems have their own equipment to service. Ponds and detention features raise a separate legal question about whether they count as a regulated dam. Each of those has its own lesson, linked below, because the maintenance clock and the responsible party are different for each one.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
An owner wants to swap a water-hungry lawn for drought-tolerant plants, but the CC&Rs require turf grass. What does EPA recommend the board do?
The entrance sign bed needs weeding and a homeowner's backyard garden needs watering. Who normally handles each, absent a CC&R twist?
The board wants to cut the common-area water bill without changing a single plant. What should it upgrade first, per EPA?
Sources
- WaterSense, Take Action, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Architectural Review
Next, see how irrigation equipment itself gets maintained in the Irrigation lesson.
Whether landscaping upkeep is the association's job or the owner's, and whether your covenants allow drought-tolerant or native plantings, is set by your CC&Rs and any local water-use ordinance.