Creating a Xeric Garden in a Traditional HOA
August 11th, 2025
How Ryan Harter turned his Colorado yard into a vibrant, low-water garden teeming with life
Some people buy a house for the kitchen. Others crave mountain views or a spacious garage. For Plant Enthusiast Ryan Harter, it was all about the yard.
Ryan and his wife, Allison, bought a house in one of Denver’s southernmost suburbs, so they could transform its traditional yard into a hummingbird and pollinator haven, all while saving water.
Ryan caught our eye on Instagram (@TheXericGarden) and through mutual friends. His Instagram feed—much like his landscape—sings with colorful, low-water flowers. What’s interesting about Ryan is that plant design is his passion, rather than his full-time job.
Ryan is a telecommunications engineer by trade, but he’s been intrigued by plants since he was a little boy growing up in central Kansas.
“I’d play in the playground [at the park] for 10 minutes, and then I wanted to go wander in the gardens. My mom wasn’t sure what to make of it,” Ryan laughs.
When Ryan first moved to Colorado, he didn’t realize that many of the popular plants he knew from Kansas weren’t the best fit for our dry climate. But he began visiting Denver Botanic Gardens, and he discovered a beautiful palette of plants that didn’t need much water.
“I remember the first time I saw an ice plant,” Ryan says. “It looked like creeping phlox, and I thought, ‘What the heck is this?’ That’s when I realized how different and cool the plants are here.”
Ryan jumped into learning about plants that thrive in the Intermountain West. He found resources such as Plant Select and High Country Gardens, and he experimented with water-wise plants, learning “the hard way” not to overwater them.
Creating a yard with purpose
When it was time for Ryan and his wife to buy their current house, he knew the move would essentially be for the landscape. They found a house with a sloped back yard that was terraced and weed free. Sure, it was filled with gum ball-shaped shrubs and islands of turf grass, but Ryan saw a blank slate—the potential for an amazing garden at 6,500 feet in elevation.
Ryan has tackled his yard transformation in phases, starting with the back yard and then moving to the front yard.
Ryan’s number one objective was to attract hummingbirds. “I’m obsessed with hummingbirds,” he admits. “The whole garden was essentially for hummingbirds. I’m also obsessed with butterflies. They just dance around the yard.”
More recently, Ryan has fallen in love with the diverse range of bees too. His garden offers a symphony of vibrant flowers for pollinators to feed and nest.
A focus on long-blooming, low-growing plants
Ryan gravitates to long-blooming plants—ideally, plants that bloom for four weeks or longer—and he looks for interesting color palettes all year around.
“I call it ‘painting with plants,’” he explains.
Ryan has created themes for different sections of his yard, such as crevice gardens and dwarf conifer gardens. It’s allowed him to experiment with diverse plants and plant groupings. He’s tied the themes into his irrigation plan. A sprinkler doesn’t fully cover an irrigation zone? Well, that’s a great spot for a dryland garden or a desert garden.
“We worked around some ‘oopsies’,” Ryan shares. “Some of the themes weren’t planned. We just had to rearrange some plants.”
Many of his garden designs use shorter plants. He believes they can offer a tidier look in many urban settings.
“I’m in a nice neighborhood with well-manicured lawns, and there’s all this wasted space in the front yards where no kids are playing… [When you use shorter plants] you can have massive flower gardens without looking wild and crazy.”
Ryan’s landscape looks lush and colorful, despite only getting watered on a seven to 10 day schedule in the heat of summer and minimally in the spring and fall.
His neighbors have taken note. In fact, Ryan has designed several of his neighbors’ front yards (with more designs in the works), spreading the beauty of low-water, sustainable landscapes in his traditional HOA.
Ryan’s “all-time favorites” from Plant Select
Ryan uses Plant Select plants throughout his landscape. We asked him, what are your go-to plants from Plant Select? Ryan says his “all-time favorites” include:
- Red birds in a tree (Scrophularia macrantha) – A hummingbird magnet.
- GRANITA® Raspberry ice plant (Delosperma ‘PJS01S’) – He says its performance can’t be matched among ice plants.
- CORAL CANYON® twinspur (Diascia integerrima ‘P009S’) – He likes the long bloom time, from June to frost.
- KANNAH CREEK® buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum var. aureum ‘Psdowns’) – Great for year-round interest.
- SUNSET® hyssop (Agastache rupestris) – It’s another hummingbird favorite, and it performs very well in his yard. Ryan likes all the Plant Select hyssops.
- Every sun daisy, but LAVENDER MIST® sun daisy (Osteospermum ‘P006S’) is his favorite. Avalanche white sun daisy (Osteospermum ‘Avalanche’) spreads a lot faster, though, so it depends on the spot.
“I could go on forever,” he says. “If it has more than a four-week bloom time, then it’s probably in this garden.”
Getting started with low-water gardening
Ryan emphasizes that if you’re just getting started, start small and be willing to experiment. You can always take a plant out.
“There’s no sound science that says you’re going to get it perfect 100 percent of the time,” Ryan explains. “It’s okay to fail. It’s part of the process. You just have to keep going!”
If you’d like to follow Ryan on his low-water gardening adventures, please check out @TheXericGarden. Our thanks to Ryan for inviting us into his beautiful landscape and sharing his story with us!
