Xeriscape

xeriscape
verb, transitive. To landscape an area in a manner appropriate for an arid climate--requiring little or no irrigation or maintenance.

When they returned to the old place, they were astonished to find that in their absence, Nature had xeriscaped the yard. There was almost no trace of the lawn he had babied and nurtured for all the years they had lived there. It had been replaced by a patchwork of ground-hugging plants that bore no resemblance to grass, except in the sunniest areas near the road, where buffalo grass had sprung up. A collection of wildflowers that had never grown near the house before formed lush patches: Indian Paintbrush, Gaillardia, Black-Eyed Susan, Queen Anne’s Lace, Prairie Sabatia and what appeared to be a kind of wild Verbena intermixed with the bunch grass waved in the wind and made a kaleidoscope of color they had not known was possible.

“All that work,” he said. “Why did I bother?”

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.