You may get some differing opinions on your question. HereÂs mine (opinion) If you are looking for a lawn with no weeds, no bare spots, no low spots, then you will have to do some work. It will require a higher degree of maintenance than it has received in the past or you will see no permanent improvement. If you are committed to maintaining your lawn, then you will need to properly fertilize, water and mow your lawn on a regular basis. Maintaining a lawn in the shade of mature oaks will be a challenge because generally speaking, grasses do not do that well in the shade. Fescues do better in the shade. Kentucky blue, does not. If you have 6 hours or more of direct sun in areas of your lawn, then KBG may work there. I have dense shade with about 3 hours max. direct sun on the side of our house. A blend of fine fescues is working quite well there but I expect to overseed this area every year. Fine fescues are not noted for their strength under heavy traffic. KBG and fine fescues blend quite will in a lawn. More KBG in the sunny areas, more fine fescue in the shade. I personally think tall fescue looks like a weed growing in with KBG or fine fescue. My choice of seed for you would be your first option (shade tolerant) and then add 10 percent by weight , the finest KBG you can find. Award , I think may be a somewhat shade tolerant KBG and may work for you in this mixture. Good luck with your lawn renovation.

He just checked out k31 on Google and is convinced that is it! Thank you tiemco. Our neighbor across the street mentioned he had an amazing drought resistant grass called Kentucky *something*. His lawn is a heavy mix of standard Michigan grass types (fescue, kb, p rye) and a lot of this stuff (k-31). It stays green all year, stays thick, and grows fast. He is excited and is going to do more investigating. thank you

Somehow Turfgrass America picked it up along with Palmetto that I had ordered for my backyard. I didn't notice it till a month later (planted July 2005) when they were establishing more rapidly and started spreading while Palmetto is still slow to establish. They both have different color, blade thickness, etc. Anyway, I contacted Turfgrass america and told them that they delivered wrong variety (probably half-full pallet worth that was mixed in with other 6 pallets of palmetto) so they had a guy come over and look at it. He told me that they do not grow floratam where they are growing palmetto and that it is raleigh. Huh??? my neighbor has Raleigh st aug and they don't even look the same as what I have. Does Raleigh have thick purple reddish stolons? All the information point me to Floratam. I don't know what to say. It grows fine although it seems to suffer winter dieback (I live about 20 miles south of DFW). Does Raleigh suffer winter dieback?

What are the benefits of various lawn grasses, specifically fescue and rye? I note that the commercial grass mixes usually have these and, perhaps, Kentucky bluegrass. I live in northern New York (100 miles south of Montreal); plenty of rain (and ice and snow) so watering is not a problem.