I would suggest that you look at the Hard Fescues - they are nearly tailor-made for your situation. They don't require much fertilizing, are low-maintenance, and actually can create a kind of "wave pattern" that is actually attractive in areas where they are mowed high. Some of them are dark in color, and are often used along steep areas along roadways. They can tolerate a good amount of shade (among the most tolerant). The only negative I know of is that they are slower to green up in the Spring.

for kid play areas grass is your best option. looks from the photos that the grass failed in areas where there were likely tree roots, meaning the grass was not getting enough water (tree roots got it instead). you have quite a list of trees you want to plant, make sure you give them sufficient room, cramming a bunch together is a waste--and keep in mind they will affect the grass growth eventually with their shade and their root systems.

You could propagate more moss, and have a moss pathway. To do this, fill a blender about 1/3 of the way up with pieces of moss, add 3 cups buttermilk, and pour this mixture where you want the moss to grow. Keep the area moist, and by summer it will be growing. Oh yeah, before pouring the moss- spray round-up on any grass or weeds that are there. Don't spray it on the moss- someone told me once that round-up would kill weeds and not the moss, but I found that not to be true. I had a client in Atlanta, that over the course of a couple years, I propagated enough moss to fill in about 1/2 acre of pathways with moss. It was spectacular!

this is new jersey, as in northeast coast US near new York. I'm doing work at someone's house. Their goal initially was to just have a no-mow no water or fertilizer lawn. Then I or they pointed out how some of these no mow/water/fertilizer covers can be flowering type things instead of just grass and they liked that idea better. So we set out to find something like that online in seeds or plugs but I didn't really find anything at first. I just recently found a lot of those things are on ebay cheap seeds and should be started indoors over winter and planted in spring instead of planted now in Fall like grass seeds. At first, we kind of scrapped the idea of a flowering cover because they wanted to do the whole lawn with it but don't want it to spread to the neighbors' lawn especially underground and popping up. So we decided to just do a no-mow type lawn like Pearls Premium http://www.pearlspremium.com/ But considering the cost of the no-mow lawn seeds and not using chemical starter fertilizer or crabgrass preventers, it's a gamble to try and plant and hope it doesn't just turn to crabgrass. I have organic fertilizer but it's no where near high in phosphorus to develop good roots quickly like regular starter fertilizer, Organic starter fertilizer I can only find online believe it or not. Instead of doing the whole yard with something like Pearls Premium, It would probably cost them less for me to just till large landscape beds throughout the property and then get seeds off ebay of things like flowering ground cover (that doesn't spread underground like crazy) and things like creeping juniper etc. I'm open for suggestions on thing like this. Once these things are established, they need zero water and zero mowing and maybe a sprinkle of organic fertilizer every few years. They will need a pruning every few years but that's like an hour of work maybe. At the beginning, yes the newly planted landscape beds will have to be de-weeded well until the plants establish and thicken it up. We're leaving about a 8 foot border space from the property line that will just remain how it is now which is basically weeds with some turf grass mixed in. A no-mow lawn still needs to be cut maybe 3 times a year, so these 10' borders will have to be mowed anyway if they're left how they are or if regular grass or no-mow grass is planted there. Once the landscape beds are thriving, they can decide to plant regular or no-mow grass in the border areas. I can do that now since it's the right time instead of waiting until next Fall but we want to see how the landscape beds go first. I can probably just scalp mow the weedy border areas and that will really retard growth there so that omits the whole having to plant grass there but the yard will still look nice because of the landscape beds. Get the idea now? It's about making a nice yard with minimal mowing, watering, fertilizing, and the cost is very low thanks to ebay seeds. perennial ground cover flowering: http://www.pbcgov.com/newsroom/1211/_images/ground_covers_tibouchina.jpg http://img.diynetwork.com/DIY/2014/03/07/CI-Stepables_Groundcover-wooly-thyme_h_lg.jpg creeping juniper: http://s45.photobucket.com/user/mishmosh2000/media/misc/Oot_Picture-7.jpg.html etc