Turf and putting greens in Thompson Crossing.

Each guide ends its list of typical improvements with thirteen items that are “NOT PERMITTED under any circumstances”: clotheslines, evaporative coolers, free-standing flag poles, rooftop equipment, wells and, at number 10, synthetic turf. The landscape section then names the only grass it pictures, turf that “shall be a high quality Kentucky bluegrass or an approved drought tolerant fescue.”

Both guides also say they “do not modify or supersede” local, county, state or federal law: in a conflict, jurisdictional regulations take precedence and the most restrictive standard applies. Behind a detached home, the Colorado rule printed below is that jurisdictional regulation. In a front or side yard, or the strip a detached walk leaves along the street, it depends on the lot; ask the Design Review Committee before a plan shows turf there.

The Design Review Committee approves all architectural and landscape designs, and the 2006 guide lets it refuse one on design or style even when every minimum is met. Landscaping plans come from a professional landscape designer, unless the committee waives that for the applicant’s background, and go in as two sets on 24-by-36-inch sheets with the review fee. The drawing has to locate the turf areas, the edging and any special landscape feature.

A green brushes against several listed items. Play and sports equipment and swing sets need approval of type and location, and landscape lighting has to stay conventional, with no glow that becomes a nuisance next door. The committee approves, approves with conditions or denies; the Phase II guide promises a letter within 30 days of a submittal. A written waiver request that goes unanswered for 30 days, is resubmitted and goes unanswered another 30 is deemed approved under both guides.

Colorado’s business registry lists Thompson Crossing Community Association, formed in August 2006, and Thompson Crossing II Association, formed in January 2016, both nonprofits in good standing. The 2006 guide sends plans to the first association’s committee. The Phase II guide addresses a Thompson Crossing Phase II Community Association committee, but the copy the Town posts prints “Address Line 1” where the address belongs and leaves its architectural reviewer to be determined.

That guide hands the Town of Johnstown’s own review committee the residential models and major changes to the development’s features or amenities, and names no role for it in a single lot’s landscaping. Both guides tell owners to request the most current revision, and the Town’s copies carry 2006 and 2014 dates. Ask your association which committee reviews your filing, and for its current guide, before a designer starts drawing.

Larimer County’s records show six Thompson Crossing plats on about 180.7 acres: the 2006 plat with replats in 2008 and 2010, then the Thompson Crossing II filings of 2015 and 2016. Measured from the county’s lot polygons, the 316 numbered lots have a median of about 9,200 square feet. The 149 lots from the 2006 plat and its replats reach about 28,600 square feet, 26 of them at 15,000 or more; the 167 Phase II lots top out near 23,000.

The guides sort every lot as Estate, Large or Standard, and the Phase II guide counts a lot 80 feet wide or more as an Estate lot. On one of the bigger early lots, a putting green, a turf play area and planting beds can share the space behind the house; a Phase II lot near the median leaves less to divide, and the landscape plan has to choose.

Trees and large shrubs may not block neighboring views of the open spaces, the Thompson River valley or the Rocky Mountains, and the guides steer designs away from formal plantings, hard edges, mow curbs or anything else that draws a lot line. Landscaping next to native open space should blend into it, and retaining walls should stay low and natural enough to read as an outcropping.

Around a green or a turf lawn, that points to low planting and an edge that curves away from the property line rather than tracing it. Fences stay open: side and rear fences copy the community’s rail fence, two rails on the 2006 plat and three in Phase II, with approved mesh allowed on the inside. Privacy fencing must sit within 20 feet of the house and run 35 feet at most, and a dog run needs the committee’s approval of its materials, colors and location.

The 2006 guide puts every lot on a dual water system: Town potable water inside the house, and non-potable irrigation water piped to the landscape while the irrigation canals run, typically May through September. Watering outside that window means the house’s own potable water through spigots and hoses, and the greenbelts run on the non-potable system too. The Phase II guide drops the paragraph, so ask whether a Phase II lot shares that system.

Both guides also require an automatic, clock-activated, buried sprinkler system throughout all yards. A turf area or a synthetic green draws none of that canal water, but whether its sprinkler zone may be capped under the “throughout” wording is a question for the committee. A turf base has to respect the drainage rule as well: no change to the lot’s established drainage pattern, and none that harms an adjoining lot.