liz, First of all, welcome to this forum, but...would you please start a new topic rather than hitching onto this one. This forum system can be confusing. The problem is people click on this topic and have to read through the original poster's discussion before getting to you. That is a waste of time for us trying to help. So if you could start a new topic and tell us exactly where you live. As tiemco mentioned, LA is a big place if you don't get too specific. Some people think El Segundo is LA while others think Big Bear Lake is LA. Climate and soil are completely different, so it helps to know which community you live in. The difference between West LA and East LA is dramatic for turf. Also mention the details of your water restrictions. Some are much more severe than others. Have you tested your sprinkler to see how long it takes to fill several cat food or tuna cans? One person's "good soaking" is another person's light mist. What kind of grass do you have now? Can you post a picture of the overall lawn - preferably taken on a cloudy day. Then take another picture at a distance of 3 inches looking down on the brown grass. Many grasses go dormant in the winter and will come back very green without doing anything. We should be able to tell from the pictures what grass you have. So don't reply to this - please start a new topic. Thanks

I really really REALLY wish you had written in here before getting the soil. This is a very bad start. Here are the issues. Yes fescue is fairly common all over SoCal but that doesn't mean it is socially acceptable in your drought. Unless you live west of I-5 in Orange County or west of the 405 in the LA area you should reconsider fescue. I can see by the hills that you are most likely more inland, so where are you? (note: I figured out where you are...see the last paragraph). LA is a big place with respect to climate and soils. About the only places to the west with hills like that are Palos Verdes and Malibu. Put it this way, if the weather forecast, "Late night and early morning low clouds near the coast burning off by 11," does not pertain to you, then don't grow fescue. I would suggest looking into two other grasses that can get by with much less water. Those are St Augustine and Shadow Turf (a variety of zoysia). Both of those will work in the narrow strip between the house and fence. Bringing in more soil is usually a mistake. Why did you do that? You can see how much work it's going to be to break up the clods. It might be easier to put a soaker hose in there and let the water drip into to soften them. Then break them with a shovel, hoe, or rake. I see there's a slope there, but was it unusually steep? Are you okay with water pooling up on your side of the fence when it rains? Or are there openings between the fence posts and the fence? It looks like a big puddle going to form about where the little dog is lying down. No grass is going to like standing in inches of water. The right way to do this would have been to leave the existing soil as is, get a soil test at Logan Labs, post it here, correct the soil chemistry, add organic fertilizer to correct the biology, kill off any vegetation already there, then seed, sod, or plug. You've got 10 times more work in just soil prep than had you not done that. Now once you have the soil declodded and leveled and grass in, you still need a soil test to correct the chemistry of the new soil, and you'll need organic fertilizer to correct the biology. So it's the same procedure, but you added tons of extra work with that new soil. Okay, I'm a dummy. I just saw your screen name. If you live in Inglewood, you are definitely in the morning fog zone. But being a touch east of the 405 you seriously are on the border of using one of the Marathon fescue varieties. I lived in Hawthorne over by Aviation for most of the 70s. Marathon should work. If you get Marathon III you may only need to mow it once a month and water it once every 3 weeks. This last point is very important, because virtually everyone in SoCal will advise you to water it every day. That is wrong. You don't even need to do that in Phoenix. With your climate (summer high temps in the 70s) you should NEVER have to water it more than once every 3 weeks. When you do water you should water deeply, 1 inch, all at one time. How were you planning to water that strip? I might be inclined to put in either drip irrigation or just lay a soaker hose in there. If you were to water a full inch on 15x50 feet of ground, that would be 460 gallons of water. If you turned on your soaker with a trickle drip out of the faucet you would be applying about 850 gallons per week. So you could turn on a soaker at a trickle drip and leave it on 24/7 for 4 days and not have to water again for 3 weeks. Well I've been my usual wordy and possibly helpful, but in this case confusing about your location. I am so adamant about getting the right grass for the SoCal drought that I'm leaving my rant in for future generations of readers. Please don't take it personally. Fescue is used all the way out to Palm Springs and it is just inappropriate east of, well, YOU!

Adrienne in Thousand Oaks: Regarding UC Verde Buffalo Grass, we installed it June 2021 so can attest to how it took watering twice a day to establish, then less frequently until we were watering twice a week with good results; I live in Thousand Oaks and were restricted to watering once a week for 15 minutes which was a good soak and it survived the limited watering last summer. When first planted as plugs we had a lot of weeds but it eventually filled in and is very thick. What we don't like is that is it dormant and brown in color from November to March; it has been slowly turning green in the last few weeks now that it is spring. It requires very little mowing, about once a month at most from spring to fall. The only way to buy it in Southern California is from FloraSource Ltd. They ship it as plugs in flats so it is labor intensive to have it installed; cost is twice that of sod.

@norm1977, wow, I hadn’t expected a response or comment anymore at this late stage, but it’s always nice when someone checks in! On the whole, the lawn is holding up great. One of my dogs passed away in 2019, 😢 so it’s only taking abuse from one instead of two now, and there are definitely places along the edges where it has died because those are regular pee spots for my boy. But I expected that, and they’re not big areas. Right now a good portion of the lawn is dormant for winter, especially where it’s more exposed when there’s the occasional frost like we got last week. It is one of the best garden investments I made!