Boost Beauty + Bottom Line

$7 MWD Rebates Transform A Savvy Investment Into an Powerful Resource

By Kirk Aoyagi: Our very nature guides us toward spaces that support our resilience, health, and wellness. These lush, leafy spaces aren’t just gift wrapping for our buildings. They are necessary. Lucky for us, they can also be profitable additions to businesses, rental properties, and public entities.

Beyond our homes, we often see landscaping as the wrapping for a location or organization, not part of its gift. This mindset increases the upfront costs of landscaping while minimizing its potential for substantial financial return and operational cost mitigation. Shifting our perspective transforms landscapes into a revenue-generating present we give our organizations and communities.

I’ll walk you through the numbers.

Greenery attracts renters and increases the willingness of people to stay in a location.
The Gateway at Willowbrook’s external greeenry encourages walk traffic.

Upfront Costs

The aesthetic most preferred by renters, renting merchants, employees and shoppers is authentic to LA. Creating a landscape using LA’s lush, varied and vibrant native grasses has surprisingly low upfront cots. Here is a quick comparison for a 1000 square foot space:

  • Native Grass Landscape: If existing irrigation can stay in place, a turf to native sedge meadow transformation costs on the low end of $9.75-10/ft.2 With new irrigation, costs rise to $18.70-20/ft.2
  • Native Plant Landscape: Replacing ho-hum, high maintenance turf with a vibrant, verdant and varied native plant landscape costs $6-7/ft2 with repurposed irrigation or $17.75-18.50/ft2 with an updated system.
  • Gravelscape: Architectural gravelscapes, popularized via early-to-mid aughts drought-related incentives, include minimal, cactus-like plantings in a predominately hardened space and range from $15.75-16.5/ft.2 without new irrigation.
  • Traditional Garden: To install a traditional garden, ineligible for sustainable landscape grants, would be $11.50-12.50/ft2 or $23.25-24.25/ft2 with updated irrigation.

While the comparative cost of going native may seem good to be true, it gets better.

Authentic Foothill Gardens attract community visits.
Once empty space is now playspace.

Operational Savings

There are several ways in which the gifts landscaping delivers in commercial environments go well beyond upfront savings. Consider the changing scenery:

  • Grants + Rebates: The new MWD commercial Cash for Grass Rebate can cover most of the upfront costs for installing a tree-full, shady native plant or IdealMow landscape. That means you immediately begin capturing returns on your investment.
  • Operational Savings: A long list of lowered operational costs leads to approximately 32 percent less maintenance for DIY homeowners. When compared to gravelscapes, native plant and IdealMow landscapes also produce lower climate control costs as well as lower fire and flood risks.
  • Revenue Boosts: The proven impacts of lush, leafy, lovely commercial landscapes include more walk traffic, longer shopper visits, a willingness to spend more, and a willingness to pay higher rent.
  • Insurance Impacts: Insurance companies consider how businesses landscape to mitigate fire, flood, slide and drought risks as they review insurance rates and insurability as a whole.
  • Tax Savings: Through the Safe Clean Water Program, both California and LA-area communities also tax impermeable spaces as a way to fund stormwater management system updates.

We think once you see the green and growth a sustainable landscape brings to your space, you’ll want to keep it forever. That said, in the event you decide to sell, we have still more good news for you.

Walk traffic immediately improved with greenery. This is now a bustling block.

ROI at Sale

While there needs to be more research defining the returns on sustainable commercial landscapes, there is clear and compelling evidence of a raised value at sale. Consider:

  • Commerical buyers show a willingness to pay 10-31 percent more for LEED-certified properties, and wise landscapes contribute significantly to each LEED category.
  • ROI of residential landscape renovations measures between 15–20 percent. Verdant, varied, treeful landscapes and those perceived as low maintenance sit at the high end of the range.
Senator Carol Liu honors community leaders, volunteers, and the owners of the Sierra Madre Post Office for their community stewardship and new fire-ready native plant demonstration garden.

Community Investment

For entities that aim to serve the broader community, lush and lovely landscapes create profoundly valuable social and health impacts. These are greatest in high density urban environments – the same spaces in which the impacts of a landscape on the ecology, social equity, and health and wellness are greatest.

We hope this provides a compelling context for MWD’s substantial commercial rebates. They are an opportunity to do so much more than save money on a renovation. If you have questions, we delight in being a resource.