Where it does bite an association

The exposure is not enforcement. It is procurement.

A board planning a common-element replant or a redevelopment on association land needs to check whether the local government's development regulations now bar the grass the landscape architect specified. The prohibition operates through the local entity's approvals, so an association project that requires a permit, a site plan approval or a landscape review can be refused on that basis — not because the association broke the statute, but because the city can no longer approve nonfunctional turf.

“Nonfunctional turf” is the term to understand. Denver's own definition, used in its landscape work, is “cool-season, bluegrass turf such as kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, and perennial ryegrass that requires a lot of water to maintain its appearance” when found in areas like medians, roadsides or parking lots. The concept is turf nobody walks on.

The practical sequence for a board is therefore: confirm whether the project needs a local approval; ask the jurisdiction whether its regulations have been amended yet, because many have not; and specify the planting palette accordingly rather than discovering the problem at review.

Colorado towns are already writing it into local code

Two examples confirm the pattern. The Town of Basalt adopted Ordinance No. 22, Series of 2025 on non-native turf. The Town of Ridgway adopted Ordinance No. 03-2025. Neither is in a major metro, and both show smaller Colorado jurisdictions putting the state floor into their own codes during 2025 — ahead of the 2028 deadline.

Denver is drafting the biggest version. The Denver Resilient Landscapes zoning text amendment would update the city's landscape requirements and ban planting nonfunctional turf in residential, commercial and industrial development and along roads and medians. No council bill number has been assigned; the project ran Phase 1 engagement from March to September 2025 and Phase 2 from September to December 2025, with an advisory committee meeting through December 2025, and final review and City Council approval anticipated in 2026. That makes it a proposal, not law.

Denver's own materials are explicit about scope, and this is the sentence that answers a panicked member: the rules under consideration “would apply to new development and some redevelopment sites only. Denver residents who are interested in changing their landscape will have access to project resources … but this will not be a requirement for existing property.”

The project materials contain no discussion of HOA covenants or of enforcement against homeowners' existing landscaping.

The combined picture, stated once

Put the three Colorado instruments together and the position is coherent, if rarely explained:

An association cannot force turf on an owner who wants xeriscape — C.R.S. 38-33.3-106.5, since SB23-178.

A local government can no longer approve new nonfunctional turf on common-element projects, and from 2028 on larger multifamily projects — SB24-005 as extended by HB25-1113.

And an association may still fine an owner who is not watering to the maximum a local restriction permits — the reading the state's own HOA Information and Resource Center published on July 23, 2026, after Colorado entered Phase 3 of its Drought Response Plan on June 4, 2026. The shield in C.R.S. 38-33.3-302(k)(II) protects the owner watering at the permitted ceiling, not the owner who stopped.

Three rules, three directions, and none of them says a Colorado association must replace its lawn.

What to watch next

January 1, 2028 is the date to diary: the multifamily extension takes effect and local entities must have amended their development regulations. For an association that owns or manages buildings above twelve units, that is when the procurement problem arrives.

Nearer term, watch the Denver text amendment for a council bill number, and watch your own jurisdiction's landscape code. The state's own summary of HB25-1113 is published by the Division of Real Estate's HOA Information and Resource Center, which has been running landscaping education for boards — a March 4, 2026 forum on lawn conversion resources and water-wise landscaping, and the July 2026 drought advisory. Twenty-three complaints reached the state in 2025 in its xeriscaping and landscaping category.