I've done the same, and now my yard is green year round because all that's left are native plants. My neighbor was bragging about his $300 water bill, then asked me what my secret was.

I let everything flower in the spring to let whatever survived the heatwaves, droughts, and freezes seed and outcompete the new stuff, then it gets mowed every other week at the highest setting.

I am about to seed some clover to help fix more nitrogen into the soil, though.

I just realized I can probably spray the yard with aquarium water after I do a change instead of pouring it down the drain.

After the 2nd year of cutting our farm, we stopped, our vets told us it's actually better for our rescues to have roughage than just straight grass. A good number of ours are metabolic and aren't supposed to eat super sugary grass. After the 1st year of not cutting, all the animals look great and tons of insects came back, now we have fireflies in the summer by the thousands, I haven't seen them since I was a kid. It's been amazing. Some of the fields in the morning during the summer I'll go out and just listen, as the noise from all the bugs is incredible.

O and the few small caves we have....the bats are back in large numbers as well...love me some bats.

I thought the one thing about these sort of yards compared to more varied ones is that they're way easier to maintain.

Of course just not doing yard work is another option but maybe not so pleasant after a while.