BEVERLY HILLS - This time, no gavels banged, no tempers flared and no sheriff's deputies were summoned.

Calm prevailed Monday when a compromise was brokered over a xeriscape yard that won a state award but aroused the unrelenting ire of a neighborhood association.

Owner Sol Koppel said his Florida-friendly yard conserved water. The neighborhood association said it was ugly and that Koppel failed to go through proper channels.

The compromise will require Koppel to add a couple flower beds and some patches of grass, and Koppel said he plans to choose drought-tolerant varieties.

"It was a win-win situation for everybody," he said. "I think they sort of came to their senses and realized it was the right thing to do for the state of Florida and the community, and they realized that I'm just not a hell-raising rebel."

After a monthslong dispute with the Oakwood Village Homeowners Association, peace was forged Monday after Koppel met with association president Thomas D'Onofrio and two other neighborhood officials. They met at the foot of his front yard.

Koppel had been sentenced in an impassioned hearing Thursday to work with the association to come up with a plan to add more grass.

He explained Monday that his yard wasn't finished, and he would be establishing little islands of flower beds sandwiched by 1-foot wide strips of peanut grass.

The grass requires little water, grows only about 5 inches tall and blooms with little yellow flowers.

That was good enough for D'Onofrio, former mayor of a Massachusetts town of 25,000.

"As long as it's green, that's his privilege of using what type of grass he wants," he said. "It was a very cordial meeting, and I was very glad we could get it done this way. I didn't want to press any fine on him.

"It's never been done in my administration."

The dispute began last summer when Koppel dug up his yard after reading brochures from the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the University of Florida that urged water conservation.

He hoped to save time on lawn maintenance so he could spend more with his wife, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.

But the Oakwood Village architectural review committee said the xeriscape violated deed restrictions in the neighborhood, which sits across from a golf course. Even the Certified Florida Yard award Koppel won from the university and posted in his yard did little to sway them.

They told him the sign was also against deed restrictions.

But by Monday, emotions had subsided.

"We decided he needed more grass," D'Onofrio said, "and he decided what it was going to be."