Artificial turf in Columbine Valley, CO, beside the fairways you look out on.

Choose the practice the course cannot give you every evening.

A few useful putting lines near the house can make regular practice easy. Discuss the cup positions, contours and fringe you want, then leave room for walking and the surrounding garden. A view of the course does not require the entire yard to become turf.

For an established property, include trees and roots in the preparation discussion. For a new yard, decide how the turf meets future beds and paths before the edges are priced.

Check both the course side and the street side.

Mark the boundary and any shared drainage features beside the course. Show us water that arrives from outside the proposed area so it is considered separately from the surface choice.

At the street, confirm the Town’s right-of-way boundary before drawing turf to the curb. Bring any Town or community conditions to the visit; the visible lawn edge is not always the property line.

Columbine Valley is governed by 12 separate HOAs, and every resident belongs to the association nearest their home. Covenants differ between them, and the Town keeps no HOA documents and provides no services to the associations, so the right rules come from your own association, not the Town (Town of Columbine Valley). In the original Old Town area, the Columbine Valley Homeowners Association applies its Use & Building Restrictions, adopted in 1955 and amended in 1996, along with Rules & Regulations adopted in 2006. A turf or putting-green plan there goes to the association's Architectural Committee for approval before the Town will issue a building permit (Columbine Valley Homeowners Association).

The golf course came first. The town grew around it.

Columbine Valley began in 1955, when a golf course and homesites were laid out on the 295-acre Heckendorf Farm in the South Platte River Valley west of Littleton, with open views of the mountains, a plateau and the winding river (Town of Columbine Valley). The town grew out of the homeowners association its first residents formed, and incorporated in 1959.

Columbine Country Club's original 18 is a Henry Hughes design, with a links-style 9-hole par-3 added by von Hagge, Smelak and Baril and a full Rees Jones renovation in 2018. It hosted the 1967 PGA Championship, won by Don January in an 18-hole playoff (Wikipedia).

About 600 homes sit on and between its fairways today, and a backyard green there can take its cues from the course over the fence.

Thin grass under old trees, and new houses on bare ground.

The town's original core is 1960s and '70s ranches, and sixty years of tree growth, along with the course's own irrigation and canopy, have thinned the bluegrass in a lot of those yards. Turf gives a fairway-side lawn that stays even and green without the watering.

The town also has a run of new houses built since 2010, landscaping from bare ground with no old lawn to tear out. For those, we can plan the whole yard at once, and you approve the layout before anything starts: a lawn, a green and a corner for the dog.

River-valley ground that stays damp.

Columbine Valley sits at 5,358 feet on old irrigated farm ground in the South Platte valley, where river alluvium mixes with the region's swelling clay (Colorado Geological Survey). The locally named Englewood soil series runs 35 to 60% clay, with slow permeability (USDA).

The Town runs stormwater and mosquito management programs, and next to the course its irrigation, drainage and tree canopy shape how wet the neighboring lots stay (Town of Columbine Valley). A base with real drainage matters more here than on high, dry ground.

Out front, check where your lot ends. The Town keeps a right of way along its streets that often looks like part of the front yard, so ask the Town where its strip begins before turf runs to the curb (Town of Columbine Valley).