Real DFW yards, before and after
Irving is one of the few cities that names artificial turf as allowed
Most North Texas cities are silent on synthetic turf. Irving is not, and the language works in your favor. Unified Development Code Section 4.5.4(a) states that front and side yard areas adjacent to any street on residential property shall be maintained with grass, ground cover, other natural vegetation, or a variety of rock, stone, gravel, artificial turf, and other unpaved materials in a Xeriscape landscape plan. Artificial turf is named, in the front yard, in the ordinance text. It is also grouped with unpaved materials, so it is not counted against you as impervious cover under 4.5.4(b). Rear yards are not addressed by that section at all. One nuance we will state plainly rather than glossing: Section 4.5.2(a)(1) says no artificial or synthetic plant materials may be used to satisfy the requirements of the ordinance, and that provision sits in a part of the code scoped to nonresidential property. Read together, fake shrubs and trees cannot count toward required plantings, while artificial turf is expressly acceptable as a residential ground surface. One more thing: do not let anyone cite Chapter 52 at you. That is the repealed zoning ordinance. The live citation is UDC Chapter 4.
Twice a week, year round, and never on a Monday
Irving limits landscape watering to two days a week for the whole calendar year, not just in a drought. Odd numbered addresses water Wednesday and Sunday, even numbered addresses Tuesday and Saturday, and there is no irrigation on Mondays, Thursdays or Fridays. From 1 April through 31 October watering between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. is an ordinance violation. Hand watering with a positive shutoff nozzle is allowed any day for up to an hour, and new sod may qualify for a temporary variance. Irving is unusual on supply as well: the city holds its own water rights in Lake Chapman, pumped roughly 80 miles to Lewisville Lake and treated for Irving by Dallas, and it also buys treated water from Dallas Water Utilities under a wholesale contract that requires Irving to impose restrictions at least as strict as Dallas does. A lawn on a two day schedule inside a Texas August is not a lawn that is winning. That is the honest case for turf here, and it does not need exaggerating.
How we build for Irving ground
- Identify which Irving you are on: Blackland clay or Trinity terrace sand. The base spec is not the same for both.
- Excavate to a working subgrade: on Houston Black, Ferris, Heiden or Trinity clay the native soil accepts about 0.03 inches per hour.
- Aggregate base with lateral escape: water leaves sideways to an outlet, not downward into a Vertisol.
- Geotextile between clay and base: without it the clay migrates up and the base is finished inside a few seasons.
- Grade for the crack cycle: these clays open when dry and swell shut when wet. The build has to tolerate movement.
- Cap and document the irrigation: so the zones you keep still work and the ones you retire are not leaking under the lawn.
The city is split between the heaviest clay and river terrace sand
Irving is not uniformly black clay, and pretending otherwise leads to the wrong base. The soil survey maps Blackland clays across most of the city, Houston Black, Heiden, Ferris, Trinity, Wilson, Burleson, Ovan and Normangee among them, alongside sandy and loamy Trinity river terrace soils including Bastsil, Silawa, Silstid, Dutek and Rader, plus large areas of urban land complexes and Arents where the ground has been reworked by earthmoving. The numbers that drive the build: Houston Black, Ferris, Heiden and Trinity are hydrologic group D with a representative surface rate of about 0.03 inches per hour. Wilson sits between 0.38 and 1.28. Rader, on the sandy terrace, runs close to 4 inches per hour. That is a hundredfold spread inside one city. Houston Black and Ferris are both smectitic Vertisols, and the official series descriptions say it well: water enters rapidly when the soil is dry and cracked, and very slowly when it is moist. On heat, the DFW airport station, part of which sits inside Irving city limits, averages about 20 days a year at or above 100 degrees on the 1991 to 2020 record, with 7 in 2025, 55 in 2023 and 71 in the record year of 2011.
Rules and approvals
Is artificial turf legal in an Irving front yard?
Yes, and it is named in the ordinance. UDC Section 4.5.4(a) lists artificial turf among the acceptable front and side yard materials for residentially zoned property as part of a xeriscape landscape plan. Very few North Texas cities put it that plainly.
Do I need a permit?
Irving does not require a permit for residential artificial turf. Section 4.5.8(c)(3)(a) allows grass and ground cover to be removed or maintained at any time without a city permit, and occupied residential property is exempt from the tree preservation article. We still confirm with Irving Planning and Inspections for your specific lot rather than assuming, because zoning overlays, Site Plan Districts and PUD development plans can carry their own landscaping rules that displace 4.5.4.
I live in Las Colinas. What happens there?
Las Colinas is the important case in Irving and the answer is genuinely useful. We read the 52 page Las Colinas Association Architectural Control Guidelines approved in March 2025, and the words artificial, synthetic and turf do not appear anywhere in them. Every improvement must go to the Architectural Control Committee for review. So artificial turf in Las Colinas is neither pre approved nor prohibited. It is a case by case ACC submission, and how the packet is presented matters. We prepare those.
Can my HOA just say no?
Yes. Texas Property Code Section 202.007 protects drought resistant landscaping and water conserving natural turf. The word natural is in the statute and artificial turf is not mentioned in it, so a Texas association may lawfully prohibit synthetic grass. A related 2025 law, HB 517, does stop an association fining you for brown vegetation during a period of watering restriction, which is useful but is not permission to install turf.
Water and cost
Does Irving pay me to remove grass?
No. We searched Irving conservation pages and the full codified water management plan for rebate, incentive, retrofit and turf removal. Irving has no turf removal rebate and no water conservation rebate. It does offer a free residential irrigation system check up by a licensed technician, which is worth booking. Anyone telling you a rebate offsets your turf cost in Irving is guessing.
What does it cost?
Installed turf runs $8 to $12 per square foot in North Texas in 2026. On the Blackland clay side of Irving the base build is the cost driver; on the Trinity terrace sand it is usually less. That is one reason we walk the yard before quoting instead of pricing off a satellite image.
Is the water saving real on a two day schedule?
The saving is real but it is smaller than the marketing usually claims, because Irving already caps you at two days a week. The stronger argument in Irving is what the lawn looks like in late August under that cap, and what you stop spending on resodding, aeration and a mowing service.
Irving specifics
Which Irving neighborhoods do you work in?
All of them. Irving has 107 registered neighborhood associations and HOAs, and the largest by area are Las Colinas at over 7,000 acres and Valley Ranch at over 2,000. We regularly work Hackberry Creek, Cottonwood Valley, University Hills and Plymouth Park as well.
Do you do rental and build to rent properties?
Yes, and Irving is the strongest rental market we serve. Census figures put owner occupancy at 38.1%, so roughly 62% of occupied units are rentals. For an operator the math is straightforward: no mowing contract, no irrigation bill inside the watering window, and no resodding a trampled yard between tenants.
Some Las Colinas properties use reclaimed water. Does that change the saving?
It can, and it is worth checking before you count on a number. Parts of Las Colinas irrigate with reclaimed non potable water rather than treated drinking water, so the cost per gallon is different from the rest of Irving. We would rather flag that than let you build an expectation the water bill will not meet.
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