In 1981 Denver was hit by a serious drought. Around that time, Nancy Leavitt, an environmental planner with Denver Water, attended a meeting about finding a better term for low-water landscapes. That evening she thought about the Greek word for dry, “xeros,” and the next morning she considered combining it with landscape. The result was “xeroscape,” but she worried people might read it as “zero-scape,” meaning no landscaping at all. So, she changed it from “xeros” to “xeri,” and after about ten years, the word xeriscape caught on and is widely used.
Growing Home - Xeriscape
