A plant with spiraling, star-shaped white flowers started popping up in Karen Goodfellow’s yard this year.

She and her husband had recently ripped up the last 1,000 square feet of lawn at their St. George home. Despite being in their 70s, they did the labor themselves: They rented an excavator, installed drip irrigation, planted trees and bushes and created a swale — a ditch to capture rain water and slow its flow through the yard.

(Karen Goodfellow) Salt heliotrope and clover grow where a lawn once was in the yard of Karen and Scott Goodfellow in St. George on Saturday, August 2, 2025. Mulch and a river rock swale also make up the family's new water-efficient landscape.

When the little white flowers bloomed, Goodfellow didn’t know if she should pull them or not. She called a local nurs

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