Public enemy No. 1?

IT'S just grass, but don't tell Sheldon Lodmer, for whom the sight of a well-kept lawn borders on the transcendental. "It's very peaceful. It reminds me of openness and cleanness," says Lodmer, whose home in the hills above Malibu's Zuma Beach is fronted by an expanse of fescue roomy enough to field an NFL scrimmage. "There's just something about the look. It's very calming," says his wife Emily, gazing out from a second-floor window framing patches of brown rolling hills that lie beyond.

Brown, of course, is the normal shade of topography throughout the desert that is Southern California, but it's a hue that most people consider unthinkable for the yard. A garden means the green, green grass of home, for crying out loud. It's a feeling hard-wired into the Miracle-Gro souls of America.

The year's record low rainfall, however, may change all that. As the debate builds over the future of the lawn in Southern California, landscaping and horticulture experts say more homeowners are breaking away from water-gobbling turf and replacing the requisite emerald carpet with cactus, native plant collections, synthetic turf or rock gardens. The frontyard of one home in Woodland Hills is filled with decorative wood chips.

"Brown is beautiful, especially during a drought," says Susan Tellem, who ripped out her lawn just a few blocks away from the Lodmers and left the rest to nature. Standing in an accidental landscape of fallen leaves, dirt and the odd cactus and succulent, she calls homes that install monster amounts of sod "a travesty."

"These lawns suck up tremendous amounts of water to keep them green," she says. "Even more moronic are the rich and not-so-rich homeowners here who allow their gardeners to fertilize and mulch those damn lawns while they water the streets and driveways, causing tremendous runoff of toxic chemicals."

Interest in drought-tolerant landscapes has "increased greatly, particularly in the last year," says Barbara Eisenstein, horticulture outreach coordinator for the Native Plant Garden Hotline, a collaboration between the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont. The hotline provides expertise on sustainable gardens and helps homeowners reduce the amount of water and maintenance their yards require -- often by removing lawns.