I cant say if thats high. Down im my area I have 3 sod farms that grow the stuff, so I bought directly from the sod farm. I had to hire my own trucker (sod company recramended him). I paid $85 a pallet with a $10 return on each pallet. It was $300 for the delivery. I bet your dealing with a lawn company or a nursery. They are just reselling the sod. Goto Empire Zoysia website and somewhere in there they list all the sod farms that grow the stuff. Start there for a better price. On the other hand, if the $150 is them laying the sod too, then a good price.

If you are really in Zone 9 and you have that much shade, then St Augustine is the only lawn grass that will survive. Since it only comes as a sod, it can be laid as fast as you can get it to the site. I would prepare it first. You need to regrade the property to get rid of the ditches. That is best done with a tractor and a tool called a box blade. Landscapers all use them. It would take no more than a morning. A landscaper will bring in more soil if needed or remove soil if you have too much. When he leaves your soil will be ready for action. The drainage will be perfect and surface will be profiled to provide that drainage. You can lay the St Augustine sod down without doing anything else. And you might not have to kill the weeds before starting that project. Do you know what weeds you have? The really bad ones in the south would be bind weed, nutgrass, and kyllinga. Bermuda can be a headache but in your shade it will never be a problem. If the landscaper comes on a Friday, you could easily have a lawn by Sunday. Where do you live? Zone 9 is not helpful because there are zone 9s in many different states with many different soil and head situations. With St Augustine it needs an inch of water per week in the heat of summer. What does not fall as rain needs to be supplemented with sprinklers. Mow St Aug at the mower's highest setting for best appearance and drought tolerance. If it gets really hot and dry, then stop mowing until the heat breaks. Let the grass grow up tall and it will survive with less water.

I'd personally go for Penncross Creeping Bentgrass is you are going for that .5-.75" height. It is adapted well for that height. Its spreading ability is very lovely, much faster than KBG. I put an all bent backyard in last fall that I mow with a reel mower at .625" and it looked wonderful last fall. Here are a few pictures when the lawn was just over two months old planted from seed: Bent really hasn't been to complicated to take care of for me. The only issue I had is snow mold this spring, but since you live in VA, that shouldn't be a problem. Since you have an irrigation system, and a reel mower, you should be all set to tackle bent. It loves lots of nitrogen, which I will be giving in the form of Turfbuilder this spring, milorganite every 21-30 days this summer, Turfbuilder late summer, and winterizer in November. Not too hard of a plan to follow. If you have a good stand of bent, you shouldn't need any preemergents or weed killers. You can find Penncross Creeping Bentgrass seed at www.outsidepride.com or at your local Lesco. Seed your lawn at 1-2 lbs per 1000 sq feet, and you can pick the seed up for $12-$18 per lb. Good luck, and let us know what you do.

You have what they call rough grading. A guy with a tractor grades the pad so they can build the house. What you need now is finish grading. There are people who do that and nothing else as far as landscaping. There are landscapers who do it too. Here's what it looks like...The tool on the back of the tractor is a box blade. Depending on how bad your lot is, an experienced finish grader should be able to fix everything somewhere between 4 and 8 hours. The trees and concrete obstacles add time to what would normally be a simple job. My niece's husband can do 5 acres in a morning. The box blade takes up all the vegetation, smooths out the bumps, fills the holes, and leaves a surface that is perfect for seed or sod. Let the person doing that job decide how much soil needs to be removed or brought in. Assuming you have that job done, then you can start watering daily for a week to sprout the weed seeds, spray with Round Up, continue watering for another week, spray again with RU, then get the sod delivered and put it down. Roll the sod down with a water fillable roller (rented), and continue watering the same way for 2 weeks to knit the roots into the ground. After that back way off on watering for the winter. It is very easy to overwater St Aug and give it a disease.