Turf and putting greens in Heron Lakes.

Those standards are the frame a turf yard gets drawn inside. Planting beds have to cover at least 25% of the lot outside the house footprint and driveway, and at least 40 percent of the plant material must be evergreen. Trees have minimums too: two specimen trees out front on top of the Town’s street trees, three or more across the rest of the lot, and at least three evergreen trees per lot.

Section 4.8 adds that most beds should do a job: foundation or utility screening, privacy, views, wind or sun block, erosion control. Read together, those numbers make a Heron Lakes turf plan a planting plan as well: the beds, evergreens and trees are counted on the same drawing as the turf.

Section 4.10 requires an automatic system at all residences and says it should be professionally designed for non-potable water, with turf zones separate from bed zones. The artificial turf the rules allow is the non-irrigated kind, so a yard that trades its lawn for turf keeps an automatic system for the beds and trees that stay. The design suggestions add one layout note: don’t leave turf strips narrower than 3 feet.

That raw water runs on the district’s calendar. It comes on around the first week of May and shuts off on the second Friday of October. The 2026 rate sheet bills single-family homes in Heron Lakes and The Rookery $500 a season, with no pro-rating when watering restrictions are in place, though the district’s Heron Lakes page says new builds are rated by lot size. Northern Lights filing 12 gets no non-potable water at all.

The Town lists the Berthoud-Heritage Metropolitan Districts as the districts covering Heron Lakes and Vantage, and the district publishes the committee’s rules. Their reach doesn’t stop once a new home’s first landscape is in: later landscape improvements get the same review as original plantings, and anything added after an approved site is finished goes to the committee before work begins. The Architectural Design Application even has a box for it, upgrade landscaping.

The form charges $250 to review initial landscape plans or any exterior improvement and $150 for a re-review, the same two numbers on the district’s fee schedule of April 20, 2026; the $800 fee on the district’s Heron Lakes page is the one the form sets for new construction. A full landscape plan under Section 4.2 shows grading at 1-foot contours carried 10 feet past the lot lines, names every plant by botanical and common name, and gives each feature its size, material and details or cut sheets.

Two documents set two clocks. The rules promise a written answer within 20 working days of each submittal (the landscape section says 20 days after the review) and keep a final approval good for 12 months, with work started inside that window. The application is tighter: approved work finished within 90 days of approval. If a turf install can’t be done inside 90 days, ask the ACC which date it will hold you to before the application goes in. Starting early has a price as well: the rules and the district’s fee schedule both list fines for work that skipped architectural review.

TPC Colorado is an 18-hole course set along Lonetree, McNeil and Welch Reservoirs, planned together with the neighborhood as one golf community. Lots beside it are asked to design for views to and from the course, and to screen blank walls and long runs of roof.

The course side is closed to crews. No gates are allowed in district-owned or golf course-owned fences, the design application bars reaching a yard by taking that fencing down or driving on course landscaping, and landscape contractors must come in through the front of the lot. Turf rolls, base material and a green’s cups and edging all arrive from the street side.

Timing is the other catch. The rules allow no outside construction during the week of the golf tournament, which is normally held in July, so a summer install on any Heron Lakes lot gets booked around the tournament week.

Section 4.9 lists the features whose details go in with the landscape plan, among them walls, large rocks, lighting, ponds, waterfalls and water features, arbors and structures. Open patios need approval and must be part of the landscape plan, and paving of any kind needs approval too, from concrete walks to flagstones, steppingstones and pavers.

Lighting around a green or a patio follows Dark Sky rules: committee approval to add fixtures, light aimed at the ground and house, the light cone kept inside the lot and the source hidden from outside the property. The design application repeats that Dark Sky landscape lighting is required on all homes.

Grade is the last piece. Any change affecting drainage needs approval, lot grading stays with the plan on record with the Town, and water has to run away from the foundation. The application asks that drainage stay the same or that a qualified person sign off on a new drainage plan, which is worth settling before a green is shaped with any contour.