The Orange County that you may have remembered from the past is changing, and a new look is starting to evolve as people’s priorities change. We all realize that areas like Anaheim and Irvine have been prized for being very much small neighborhoods more than cities, and that the residents tend to gravitate towards a way of life that is more suburban than urban. This includes things like beautifying the land surrounding your home in order to enjoy it as a usable space, as opposed to simply looking at your home as nothing more than the rooms inside the dwelling. Curb appeal has always been important in the suburbs more than in the inner city, and as a result you have probably grown used to a very specific kind of look and feel in these areas. Over time this has started to change, but not in the ways you might expect. Curb appeal and a tidy yard is still important, but people are exploring other options that require less work and are more socially responsible.
Maintaining a yard of lush and thick grass in Orange County has been an unspoken rule for many years, as the area is known for perfect weather that can grow nearly any kind of plant as long as water is supplied. While this is not an issue when there is ample water, during drought times there becomes a bit of an issue. Is it socially responsible for you to waste water on a lawn that serves no purpose except to decorate the outside of your home over people having enough water to drink? Even though it seems unlikely that Orange County will run out of water, we have seen it happen elsewhere with disastrous consequences. As a result of these lessons, residents are encouraged to conserve water by moving to smarter choices about their lifestyles than we might have made in the past. Rethinking the concept of a lawn is one of those choices, and the socially responsible generation is now moving towards the installation of water-smart landscaping ideas in orde to beautify their space while also conserving. These eco-friendly elements include things like desert landscaping, pavers and artificial turf depending on the kind of look you desire. All of the benefits of real grass can be achieved with alternatives that do not need a drop of water, and because of these shifts in consciousness in the younger generations, you can see more and more landscaping choices making their way into homes that involve eco-smart elements. For these reasons as well as a shift in the ideas of how they would like to spend their free time (working on a lawn or enjoying it) many younger people are challenging the traditional landscaping of Orange County. As we move further into drought conditions and summers get hotter, look for more and more people to get onboard with smarter landscaping choices. Orange County is leading the way into the future, and our suburban home owners are changing the look of it as a result.
