Out with Drought: Understanding and shifting attitudes towards drought-resistant landscaping

The Challenge: Inspire Claremont residents to adopt drought-tolerant lawns and landscaping solutions 

The Design Solution: Curriculum to introduce young students to drought-tolerant alternatives to turf lawns, and help them make the connection between their own yards and brother environmental problems and solutions 

The Impact: Tested curriculum with 33 6th graders school students from Mountain View Elementary School 

The Challenge:

Drought is a major issue in Southern California, affecting a wide range of communities and ecosystems. The good news? There are a variety of solutions that have a big impact on water conservation, such as drought-tolerant landscaping in residential neighborhoods. The bad news? People are hesitant to ditch the turf and green grass associated with the suburban dream they’ve grown to love. In the spring of 2023, a team of students in our Design for Environmental Behavior Change class partnered with the Three Valleys Municipal Water District (TVMWD) to “gain a deeper understanding of the barriers that prevent homeowners from adopting drought-tolerant landscaping” and then “developed strategies to address the challenges [they] uncovered.”

The Methodology: 

The student team used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to gain a deep understanding of key stakeholders before moving on to designing solutions and behavior change initiatives. Their research included 11 interviews, including professional landscapers, LA county residents, Three Valleys employees, and professors. They also went to the Claremont Farmers Market to engage in conversation with local homeowners and get a better sense of attitudes and behaviors surrounding drought-resistant landscaping in the LA county community. Finally, the team developed a survey with the goal of collecting “(1) data that would help us characterize the audience of [their] deliverables and (2) data that would be useful for TVMWD to understand the types of people in their jurisdiction area.” The survey had a total of 79 responses, and asked questions such as, “What functionality is most important to you in a private outdoor space?” and “What features do you associate with a beautiful outdoor space?”

The Key Stakeholders: 

As the team synthesized their research and began to find patterns and insights, two key personas emerged as the most important to enacting change: 

Residents with turf grass who “have likely noticed the changes going on around them but are unlikely to change themselves for a number of reasons. These may include an aesthetic attachment to turf grass, perception of it as a status symbol, more functional considerations like its use by pets or children, or the sheer cost of replacement.” 

6th grade students, who know about the drought issues in California but struggle to make the connection between their own lawns and the broader water crisis. 

The Key Insight: 

The students realized that both of these groups were not actively pursuing drought-tolerant landscape options because they understood the problem, but did not see it as their responsibility to fix it. They were not making the connection between their personal lives and lawns, and broader environmental challenges like drought in Southern California, or, if they were, they weren’t yet motivated to change. 

Thus, the design solution was about a combination of inspiration and introducing elements of personal agency, personal benefit, and personal responsibility. It was about taking a broad and intimidating challenge like drought and helping individuals in the Claremont community see that they were a part of the path to a more sustainable future. In the solutions you’ll read about below, the student team leaned into dreaming and inspiring rather than shaming. 

The Design Solution: 

Once the team understood key stakeholders and community members’ needs on a deeper level, they set out to create solutions that “addressed their needs and leveraged their values.” They designed two key prototypes:

The first prototype is a messaging campaign designed to “persuade middle to upper level income households living around the Claremont area to turn their lawn into more drought tolerant landscapes.” The team used social norms messaging strategies as well as focusing on how they wanted their audience to feel when looking at the campaign designs. They intentionally highlighted the benefits of the behavior they were seeking, rather than shaming people with turf lawns.  

For their second prototype, the team collaborated with Pomona’s “Outdoor Science Education” course in order to create a curriculum about drought-tolerant landscapes for 6th grade children. The curriculum was designed in response to the persona the team observed of the 6th grade student who knows about drought issues in California but struggles to make the connection between their own lawn and the broader water crisis. 

The goal of the lesson plan they designed is to educate middle schoolers about the impact of watering and maintaining turf lawns, and to introduce them to a variety of inspiring and fun drought-tolerant lawn alternatives.The curriculum is both informative and imaginative, teaching kids about their neighborhoods and communities and then asking them to design and dream up their own unique drought-resistant lawns. 

The Impact: 

In April of 2023, nine folks in the Pomona’s Outdoor Science Education course taught the drought-tolerant landscape lesson the team designed to a group of 33 6th Grade Students from Mountain View Elementary School. As the team explains, “In addition to this lesson being taught for these students, it will be in rotation for all of the future years of this Pomona course. By getting these students to begin observing the yards in their neighborhoods and to begin talking about these concepts, it is bound to enact change.”