Aerial view of a western U.S. neighborhood at golden hour, with a visible patchwork of traditional and water-wise landscapes

For institutions

Creating beautiful, sustainable communities.

Water districts, municipalities, and conservation nonprofits bring the policy, the funding, and the accountability. SimplyScapes brings the platform that turns those commitments into real yards on real streets.

The triangle

Beautiful, sustainable, resilient communities take all three of us.

Homeowners live in their yards. Professionals shape them. Institutions steward the water, the incentives, and the long-view goals. None of the three can move the needle alone — and for decades they’ve been working in software that never talked to each other.

SimplyScapes is the platform that connects the triangle. A homeowner’s design becomes a pro’s proposal. A pro’s install becomes a district’s rebate record. A district’s policy becomes the homeowner’s next Saturday project.

A triangle diagram with Homeowners, Professionals, and Institutions at the corners and SimplyScapes at the center connecting all three
Three roles. One platform. One set of resilient communities.

The primary focus

Water is the work.

In the arid West, outdoor irrigation is the single biggest lever a water provider has left. Indoor efficiency is largely solved. Agricultural reform is politically slow. Residential turf is the acreage that hasn’t moved — and it’s the acreage where institutions, professionals, and homeowners can all act.

We design the tools for that work. Every design made in SimplyScapes carries its plant palette and layout — the raw material a rebate program needs and that spreadsheets can’t provide at scale.

Water saved per home
10,000 gal
per year, from a 250 sqft parkstrip conversion (40 gal/sqft/yr Utah-adjusted rate)
Cost per acre-foot
$1,660
10-year amortization — cheaper than any supply-side alternative (desal, pipelines, transfers)
Peer-effect multiplier
1.32×
For every 100 rebated conversions, 132 homes convert organically (MWD 200M+ sqft dataset)
Statewide potential
700M gal/yr
10% Utah adoption (70,000 homes) = 2,148 acre-feet permanent annual savings
A residential parkstrip planted with native water-wise species and drip irrigation
The work, at the parcel level. Multiply by a neighborhood, a city, a state.

The carryover

Saving water is the start. The rest comes with it.

A water-wise landscape doesn’t stop at the meter. Done right, it compounds — restoring habitat, cooling streets, and making neighborhoods more resilient in the face of the other challenges the West is facing.

A native bumblebee on a Rocky Mountain penstemon flower

Pollinator rehabilitation

Native plantings restore habitat for the 1,167+ bee species native to Utah alone — along with the butterflies, moths, and beneficial insects that irrigated turf displaces. A parkstrip conversion becomes a pollinator corridor.

1,167+ native bee species in Utah — the Beehive State deserves its name back.

A fire-wise residential landscape with defensible space zones

Wildfire-resistant landscapes

Thoughtful plant selection and zoned defensible space — gravel and low-growing succulents near the home, spaced native perennials further out — reduce ignition risk in the wildland-urban interface. Fire-wise design is a choice the library makes easy.

Real plant data — zone, water use, mature size — supports defensible-space design.

A parkstrip planted with native water-wise species with drip irrigation

Urban heat-island reduction

Rock-heavy conversions run 5.4°F hotter than turf (DRI research). Plant-forward oasis designs — the kind we advocate — lower surface temperatures, cool neighborhoods, and keep cities livable through hotter decades.

Plants first, not rock-scapes — the library leads with living coverage.

Who we build with

Institutions doing the real work.

These are live deployments and a standing membership — not logos on a page. Whitelabel partners work in the product every week, and what they need shapes what we build next.

Live whitelabel deployments

Utah Water Ways + Slow the Flow

Two SimplyScapes-powered tools ship today through Utah Water Ways for the Slow the Flow conservation program: Utah Plant Finder, a curated plant-selection app for Utah's climate, and a whitelabeled Visual Designer. slowtheflow.com — the program's own site — will link out to the whitelabel soon.

Visit utahplantfinder.com →

Live whitelabel deployment

Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD)

Yardtopia is IRWD's whitelabeled Visual Designer: Southern California homeowners design their own water-wise conversions under the district's brand, on the district's domain.

Visit yardtopia.com →

Member

Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE)

AWE is the leading North American non-profit advancing the efficient and sustainable use of water. SimplyScapes is a member because the conversation about outdoor water use needs software at the table, not just policy.

Visit AWE →
A neighborhood volunteer planting event on a residential parkstrip on a Saturday morning
Where this is headed: neighborhood-scale conversions — professional install, community planting.

What SimplyScapes provides

The platform, not a pile of spreadsheets.

What ships today — and, clearly labeled, what we’re building next with partners.

Shipping today

Whitelabel deployment on your domain

The Visual Designer and plant catalog under your brand, on your domain — the model running today as Yardtopia (IRWD) and Utah Plant Finder (Utah Water Ways).

Curated, climate-validated plant catalogs

A plant-selection experience scoped to your region — real photos, zone, sun, and water-use data — like Utah Plant Finder does for Utah's climate.

Design any resident can actually use

AI gets a homeowner from photo to water-wise concept in minutes; the drag-and-drop library of climate-validated plants turns it into an exact, plant-by-plant plan — no CAD license, no training course.

Shareable designs and PDF export

Homeowners share a link or a PDF of the actual plan — real plants, real placement — that program staff can look at and understand.

In planning with partners

Program management & reporting

Enrollment, conversion tracking, and water-savings roll-ups for program reporting. In planning with our whitelabel partners — not shipping yet.

Measurement & irrigation design

Aerial measurement and irrigation design ship today in beta for professional workspaces; the institutional layer on top of them is on the roadmap.

Partner with us

Resilient communities are built together.

If you’re a water district, a municipality, a conservation nonprofit, or a funder — we’d like to talk. Tell us what you’re working on and we’ll show you exactly where SimplyScapes can pull a load off your team.

30-minute intro call. No sales pitch — just show us the problem you’re trying to solve.