Carpets of lush Kentucky bluegrass covering lawns across Colorado’s high desert are on their way out. Native plants are on their way in.

But gardeners who don’t know the right people or visit the right nursery might be out of luck when looking for their very own upright junipers, aspens, serviceberries, western sand cherries, Indian paintbrushes or yuccas.

Trees, shrubs and perennials that grow naturally in Colorado — and therefore consume far less water than non-native plants — can be hard to find despite a widespread push in their favor, growers told The Denver Post.

Some stores don’t stock many native plants because they haven’t historically sold well. Other places sell out almost as quickly as their shipments can arrive.

“We’re doing more business now than truly we ever have,” Daniel Corse, nursery area manager for Echter’s Nursery & Garden Center in Arvada, said. “We get our allotment from our wholesalers and a lot of times that’s all you can get.”

Whether stores don’t carry them or sell out fast, native plants can be difficult to find during a time when officials across the West say they’re one of the best ways for cities to save water amid a worsening drought.

About half of the water used in Denver’s single-family homes goes toward “outdoor use,” according to the city’s water provider. That largely means watering thirsty and non-native grasses.

But that estimate might even be low, Jim Tolstrup, executive director of Loveland’s High Plains Environmental Center, said. He estimated that the average city resident uses about 150 gallons of water every day.

“Sixty percent of that goes to support landscaping,” Tolstrup said. “That’s 90 gallons per person per day. We’re talking about trillions of gallons of water.”

The problem is so pronounced that cities across Colorado – like Aurora and Castle Rock – are banning non-native grass lawns in new developments. Others, like Greeley, offer rebates for homeowners willing to xeriscape, or plant their lawns with native plants. State legislators launched a turf replacement program last year too.

Native plants, on the other hand, draw an estimated 18 gallons of water per square foot each season, Tolstrup said.

They also support the kind of life meant for the high desert, said Jennifer Bousselot, an assistant professor of horticulture and landscape architecture at Colorado State University. Trees native to the area, for example, will bring back certain types of caterpillars, which will in turn attract the right species of songbirds.

This is true for larger properties just as it’s true for individual lots in a metropolitan area.

“If you plant the right plants, eventually you get the right set of nature,” Bousselot said.

More people are catching on to the idea too, which is good, Bousselot said. But as gardeners are learning more about which plants naturally belong in the high desert, they’re also running into problems finding them.

You have to know where to go, she said.

One of those places, Tolstrup said, is the High Plains Environmental Center.

“This is still kind of a specialty thing,” Tolstrup said. “People who are into native plants know about us.”

Big-box stores tend not to stray too far off the beaten path, Tolstrup said. They’ll grow what’s easy and what’s been known to sell well over the years. More often than not, those are non-native species.

Other stores make a point to carry native plants but they still don’t sell well.

The majority of City Floral Garden Center’s customers in Denver seem to think that native plants aren’t very attractive, General Manager Trela Phelps said. Or they’re unwilling to invest the time and effort to grow something until it’s large enough to look nice.

“People will ask for them and as soon as they take a look they’ll just walk away,” Phelps said.

Or they’re turned away by the price, Phelps said.

For example, a non-native bluegrass can go for $7 to $9 a pound (assume 5 pounds for every 1,000 square feet of lawn), Phelps said. Buffalo grass, a more sustainable alternative, can sell for up to $20 a pound.

The native plant section of City Floral accounts for maybe less than 1% of its business, Phelps estimated.

This sort of cycle is a type of negative-feedback loop, Bousselot said. Businesses don’t order native plants because they don’t sell and they don’t sell because businesses don’t carry them.

Over time, the industry will catch up to the increased demand and stock more native plants, she said.

Corse said he’s already on that path at Echter’s. Demand for native plants is much higher now than it was just a few years ago and with each season he’s tweaking his orders to suit the nursery’s customers.

Gardeners are also still learning which native plants they want for themselves, Corse said. Often they’re on the lookout for something colorful or that changes with the seasons. Plants that produce edible fruits or berries are popular too.

Some plants, like the waxflower (Jamesia americana), are nearly impossible to find. Plant Select, a local horticultural nonprofit, describes the shrub as intensely fragrant, which shows clusters of flowers that bloom in the late spring.

“I know a lot of people come in looking for that,” he said. “And nobody is growing that.”

Or there’s the Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja angustifolia), with its distinctive orange petals.

“That’s almost nowhere to be found,” Corse said.

Upright junipers are increasingly popular, he said, because they make for effective privacy hedges. They sell out quick. Same with Aspens, or even yuccas.

“Sometimes it sounds like a trash plant,” Corse said. “But it’s a great, low-water evergreen structural plant that provides a lot of habitat friendliness for moths specifically.”

Ultimately the industry will find a balance between the increasing demand and availability, Corse said. But there’s a lot of trial and error involved and the process takes time.

“It takes a couple of years for a wholesale grower to ramp up numbers on a specific plant to make it profitable for them while also meeting the demand on the retail side,” he said.