Ground cover is, I agree, appropriate to many situations. Prolly not to this one, though, given the OP's concern about his lawn. (He'll likely have to give up having any gorgeous grass in that sideyard.) Whether water is precious depends on where you are. Dallas? Yes. BUT...you don't need St. Augustine in Dallas. All hail Bermuda grass there! Houston? Rarely is there a drought severe enough to cause a temporary water concern. As for there, St. Augustine or "stickers" are your choices. Mobile, AL, is another place that needs St. Augustine. And rain? Try the rainiest city in the lower 48! Different regions have different concerns--some have water concerns, while fertilizer runoff is a lot more troublesome in others. (Apparently, the strawberries that annoy me so in my grass? A noxious invasive exotic. Great. Suggestions for getting rid of them or even controlling them? Pretty darned feeble, as far as I can tell.) Trying to nurse a lawn that won't ever do very well into a state of verdant, glowing health is going to do a lot more damage than watering a lawn up to two times a week in August in many places. 1" per week *includes* natural rainfall and only applies to the growing season, BTW. Areas that need St. Augustine that I've lived in have ranged from 36 to more than 40 inches of rain per year, on average. That's not much water. It's less than I had to put on my "xeric" plants in NM while they were getting established. (You should have seen me panicking when I first planted them and they started to wither even though I was watering them, in my mind, "all the time"--meaning once a week. *snort* Yes, in a high-wind, high-elevation, semi-desert environment!) I am ALL for choosing a low-maintenance ground cover--*where it works*. I haven't found a single satisfactory replacement for a lawn for kids to play on. I've looked. "Light to medium foot traffic" groundcovers won't do it, though goodness knows I wish they would. And many people live in areas in which replacing a "merely decorative" front yard is either culturally unacceptable--take that as you will--or is actually explicitly restricted by covenants or zoning laws. And that's assuming that the OWNERS like them. In those cases, the best you can do is make large beds which you can try to make as low-maintenance as possible. (Honestly, for 9/10ths or more of people, high maintenance is a bad idea from any standpoint, anyway. Vacations, boredom, illness, business--all of these things would intervene in a strict routine of trimming, spraying, fertilizing, etc., etc., to such an extent that the landscape would soon look pretty pathetic. And so often does! I am WAY too lazy to do that and bitterly, bitterly disappointed that I'll have to water the slope in back next year at least four times to keep back that $%# crab grass.) As for Lyme disease--I'd rather not have my kids--or the neighbors' kids--get it by playing in my yard. I can check myself after going out. I can trust other adults to do it, too. Stripping down elementary schoolers every time they go outside--and in summer, they're banging in and out all the time--is practically insane, but it was the only alternative to treating the 1/8th of an acre that's the major play area last year. We had started averaging, literally, a tick a week. I looked up the incidence of tick-borne diseases in our area, and the statistics were NOT good. Now, I hate using pesticides. This was the first time that I'd personally applied them. I'm killing all sorts of critters I'd LOVE to have in my back yard, but if it's that or a sick kid, I'm grabbing my bag of pesticide. Of course, I COULD just keep the deer out somehow. If you can suggest an effective and economical way of keeping deer out of a 2-acre spread, part of which is wetland, please do! *g* I mean really, I'd love to know, 'cuz I have an azalea that's looking bedraggled nearly 2 years after some young buck decided that it was an all-you-can-eat salad bar for several week running. I have another question, though, purely hypothetical at this point. In one area I lived in, we wouldn't get a hard freeze once every four years or so. And in those years, no matter how we treated the dogs (pills, sprays, collars, what-have-you), they would bring in hundreds of fleas--dozens with every trip outside--that would set up home and eat people and pets constantly. The dogs went piebald with scratching, and we were covered in bites. How can you get rid of fleas at that level of infestation without using a pesticide? We did every de-flea-your-house trick known to man, BTW, from vacuuming more than once a day to the dust that dessicates them. After going through every other option the first year, my dad (who, BTW, has a master's degree in a wildlife field!) broke down and went the poison-the-yard route--which worked beautifully, knocking back the numbers hard enough that bites were rare rather than constant. I do want to makes a BIG point about using "organics." Raw sewage is organic. It is also devastating to the environment. Soooo many gardeners like to make a big point about how they only use ORGANIC compost/worm castings/whatever on their plants. The streams really. don't. care. whether the nitrogen that gets dumped in them from your/my garden is from 100% certified premium organic sources or from cheapo-granulated nitrogen pellets. It doesn't make a difference! I like compost for all sorts of reasons, including reduced runoff and reduced chances of burning a plant because of slower release. But I don't pretend that there's "good organic nitrogen" and "bad inorganic nitrogen"--once it runs off, it's just plain ol' nitrogen. Sorry for sounding condescending--it was meant to be a drawl. ;-)

I agree I really like the mixed fescue lawn we have in back (seed mix of red,tall,etc. varieties of fescue... similar to the turf rolls sold at our local Home Depot each year)& it feels SO cool to walk on in the heat of summer & stays green most of the winter & the top does not die back. But, I find it does require more upkeep (fertilizer, water) than the very fine bladed (feels like a soft green velvet rug!)some kind of Bermuda that came in some how from a neighbor's lawn that he seeded from a variety of Bermuda he can't now recall & has now taken over our front lawn. Love them both but the latter certainly is less needy, hardier, takes abuse .... and turns brown/top dies back in winter & comes up from the roots in spring. I have to power-rake the dead top layers early in the spring every year or so before it begins to grow up again from the roots. I live in zone 7 @ mile high Albuquerque, NM & the minus 9 we got this past winter (& minus 19 back in the 1970's!)hasn't kept the Bermuda from forming a pretty front lawn again this summer... it loves the heat & we have had NO rain at all all year here in our part of the City so only survives on weekly sprinkling for an hour & fertilizing once in the spring. Some of the varieties of fescue in the seed mix I got have broader leaves & tends to clump so has to be mowed well. A neighbor bought Zoysia plugs two years ago but has had little growth or spreading from them yet & is disappointed. Guess you will have to decide on either the year round green of fescue or hardy, summer green of Bermuda maybe!

palmobsession 8 ---- wow, I can't believe you resurrected this old thread! I chuckled at some of the vehemence when I read this way back when it was first posted in '05. I do agree with you. While I love the native flora of my state, in zone 8 southern NM, I relish the drought tolerant, cold hardy palm species that I grow here. I recycle what I can, try to avoid being wasteful, etc., but I won't cave to the 'plant nazis'. I cherish having a colorful, visually interesting garden which is an eclectic mix of textures and geographically diverse plants. Most are xeric or at least moderately drought tolerant, local species or from South America, North Africa, and even Australia. I water mainly with drip irrigation and only as needed. Some get no more than one or two supplemental waterings a year, existing on what nature provides. My garden is an obsession if not a sweet addiction. Maybe its style looks a little like "So Cal meets the Chihuahuan Desert". It's not for everyone, but I didn't plant it for everyone. Anyway, I enjoyed your anger over the discussions people had. Cheers. dl

If you look at the website that promotes Turfalo (based in Lubbock where it rains very little) they start out by killing off all vegetation before laying the sod. The advantage of Turfalo is that one type of it can take a little shade. Most all buffalo grass likes dry conditions and full sun. Too much rain and low spots in the yard where water stands favor bermuda and weeds. Some have suggested buffalo grass mixed with blue gamma for thickness and to overcome weed problems. That's a very good idea whether you use Turfalo, 609, Stampede, Prairie or another variety. I have 609 which was very thick in my back yard until a very rainy summer in 2007. It didn't like that and I've had weeds since then, even with the drought last year. It tends to be weak and weedy at low spots in the yard and near the drip line of the house. Other things of note: it is generally slower to green up compared with bermuda. If it weren't for a few weeds, it could be mowed probably only once a month. In fact, it really looks better long (and probably does better, too). You don't really have to water it, even in drought, unless you want it to stay green. It doesn't much like any type of weed killer or fertilizer, although it tolerates corn gluten better than anything else. Good luck with your project. Carla