A grass-busting landscaping company, Turf Terminators launched last July with just three employees. Now the Los Angeles business boasts more than 535 full-time workers and has replaced millions of square feet of grass lawns with water-saving ground cover and drought-tolerant plants.

As the drought persists in California, homeowners’ interest in finding ways to conserve water has grown: Turf Terminators, for instance, already has received more than 60,000 customer inquiries.

For each square foot of grass they remove, homeowners save an average of 44 gallons of water a year. That means grass removal is “an important piece” of addressing California’s ongoing water crisis, says Andrew Farrell, head of business development for Turf Terminators.

Demand for such services has been spurred by California