Living in Utah, there are a lot of things about home ownership that few homeowners want to give up. You know what those are for you, better than I do. Luckily when you buy a home from Leisure Villas, opting for the active lifestyle that our age restricted senior communities offer, you are not giving up those qualities that you’ve come to love about owning a home.

As you know, you are still a homeowner, even if the home is a slightly different style than you’re used to.

One of the things that is different about our communities, is the space for planting a garden.

How to grow the things we love.

Having a garden

Gardens are great. Some people love them, some could care less. As we’ve discussed in earlier articles, you are allowed to grow your own plants, it’s just that we limit where you can grow them. You can read my article on growing a garden if you want a reminder.

How do you water your garden though?

As you may have noticed, the sprinklers around your home are all automated. You don’t really have access to these. This is for the maintenance crews to worry about. But what if you have additional plants, either in your planter strips, or in pots around your patios? How do you water them?

Each building should have multiple water spigots. If you look around your back-patio areas, you may find a spigot. This may be inside your gated area, or outside of it. Wherever it is, this is hooked up to the irrigation water, meaning that it is paid for by the HOA.

You are more than welcome to use this water for any watering needs you may have, but keep in mind that it is not usually drinkable water.

Also, especially if that water spigot happens to be inside your gated area, don’t assume that this is yours and you don’t have to share it. If a property maintenance person needs to hook up to it, chasing them off with a shovel is not advisable. This isn’t likely to happen very often, but remember, this is community water, if it happens to be in a spot more convenient for you, then you’re welcome.

While I can’t guarantee that you’ll have a spigot inside your gated area, there will be at least one between your patio area and your next-door neighbor’s patio. We don’t put extra irrigation spigots anywhere else around the house.

Culinary spigot

Each home also has one culinary water line going to the outside. This is almost always located in one of two places: Just inside your garage; or just outside your garage. Placement of this spigot depends entirely on your floorplan and the layout of interior walls (I won’t digress into those details at this time).

In any case, this water is your water only. You pay for it. It is clean water. It’s there for whatever you might need, from cleaning out your garage, to washing your car, to watering some of your own plants near that end of your home.

The only thing I would caution you on, is to make sure that you unhook your hoses when fall comes around. You don’t want them to freeze and break a water line.

Plenty of water

There’s little more I need to tell you about your exterior water spigots. They’re there, and they’re for you to use. Just because you move into a 55+ community like this, it doesn’t mean that you have to give up those simple pleasures that you loved so much about owning your last home.

So do: Take time to plant and then smell the flowers.