Albuquerque caps cool-season grass at 10 percent. For a condo development it is 20.
Albuquerque caps cool-season grass at 10 percent. For a condo development it is 20.
2026-09-15 · New Mexico · Regulation
The Albuquerque landscaping figure that circulates in drought coverage — a 10 percent cap on cool-season grass — is not the rule that applies to a condominium or townhome development. Multi-family carries a separate set of standards, with a different number.1
Two sets of standards, and they stack
The general landscaping standard at Section 14-16-5-6(C)(4)(d) of the Integrated Development Ordinance says: “No more than 10 percent of required landscape areas shall be cool season grass species.”
But multi-family residential development — condominium, townhome and apartment — is governed by a use-specific standard at Section 14-16-4-3(B)(8), which applies, in the code's own words, “in addition to all applicable standards in § 14-16-5-6 (Landscaping, Buffering, and Screening).”
Its grass rule reads: “Cool season grasses are restricted to 20 percent of the landscape area. Warm season grasses may cover up to an additional 70 percent of the landscape area.”
The constraint that actually binds a condominium
The same subsection sets out what the site must contain:
“Twenty-five (25) percent of the net lot area shall contain landscaping; playgrounds, sports courts, swimming pools, or similar features may count up to 10 percent of net lot landscaping. Tree canopies and ground-level plants shall cover a minimum of 75 percent of the total landscaped area, and the maximum a tree canopy shall count toward this requirement is 600 square feet.”
And on trees: “at least 1 tree per ground floor dwelling unit and at least 1 tree per second floor dwelling unit; no additional trees are required for additional dwelling units on the third or higher floors,” with “At least 50 percent of the trees… deciduous canopy-style shade trees or coniferous trees capable of attaining a mature canopy diameter of at least 25 feet.”
Why a condominium cannot xeriscape to gravel
Read the two requirements together. A quarter of the net lot must be landscaped, and 75 percent of that area must be covered by tree canopy and ground-level plants. Gravel, rock mulch and bare xeric ground do not satisfy it.
Add the general standard's rule that “Artificial turf/grass shall not be counted as living vegetative material,” and the position is clear: the City requires a multi-family site to carry substantial living planting.
That is happening at the same moment the water utility is paying $3 a square foot to remove turf and prohibiting spray irrigation for eight hours a day through the growing season. The two pressures are not contradictory, but they do foreclose the cheapest response.
The escape route is plant substitution, not hardscape. Warm-season grass may cover up to an additional 70 percent of the landscape area, and the Official Albuquerque Plant Palette supplies low-water, drought-tolerant and xeric shrubs and trees that count toward the requirements. A condominium association reducing its water use has to do it by changing what it plants, not by removing planting.
The amenity credit worth knowing
“playgrounds, sports courts, swimming pools, or similar features may count up to 10 percent of net lot landscaping.” An association contemplating a pool or a sport court can offset a tenth of its landscaping obligation with it — a rare instance of an amenity reducing a maintenance obligation rather than adding one.
When these standards actually bite
This is a point of precision that matters, because the standards are easy to overstate. They are applied at development approval. They are not retrofit mandates on an existing built community.
They bite when an association redevelops, adds buildings, or needs a new site plan — and, more consequentially, they bound the declarant at build-out. Which is usually how the landscaping obligation that now constrains the board got written into the declaration in the first place: the developer designed to the code of the day, and the covenant memorialised it.
An association whose declaration requires it to maintain landscaping the current code would not require, or would require differently, is maintaining a standard set by an earlier version of the ordinance. That is worth knowing before a board assumes its obligations and the City's are the same thing.
What a board or its landscape architect should check
Whether the project is being read against Part 4 or Part 5 of the ordinance — because reading only one gives the wrong answer, and where the two differ on the same ground, both have to be satisfied. Which figure applies to the site's grass area. Whether the 25 percent landscaped area and the 75 percent living-cover requirement are met as built. And whether any proposed conversion to gravel or artificial turf would take the site out of compliance with a standard the association has been carrying since build-out without knowing it.
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