Hi Kate,

Have you considered doing something besides a traditional lawn? The entire Southwest has been in a state of drought for years and 80% of water use is landscape with pools and lawns being big water wasters.

That side yard would be perfect for stone mulch - it would look good and be low care. If you really want grass forvyour backyard there is a grass called UC Verde buffalo grass that uses much less water than traditional sod and only needs mowing once a year. It comes as stollens, little pieces that you plant every foot or so and then it fills in.

I fully agree with mojavemaria. UC Verde buffalo grass would be ideal as long as it gets full sun most of the day. It comes as plugs, not stolons, so you should buy a plugging tool to make your life much easier when you install. I would not add any topsoil assuming you have adequate drainage away from the house. If you plant any trees or shrubs between the buffalo and the sun, then the buffalo will die from the shade of the plants, so keep that in mind and don't waste plugs on the north, east, or west side of other landscaping. Make those areas into garden beds of some sort.

I also agree with the rock/stone on the side yard. Buffalo will not get enough sun to grow on the side and the watering would be a headache. If you use stone, use a chipped style of stone. You might drive to the materials lot at Whitewater on I-10 and check out what they have. I would want something like you see in the upper picture below only smaller (note the quarter in the lower right of the picture. You can get it much smaller.

Chipped stone will eventually interlock and not slip around like rounded rocks. I have used the 1/4" chipped stone in landscaping around paver stepping stones. With the chipped stone you walk on it, not through it. Rounded pea gravel is the worst for slipping around and sinking into it as you walk.

For the side yard the main prep work if you use larger pavers would be to make a level place for them using sand. Put that at the bottom of the drainage and not on the angles. Once you have a level place you can drop the pavers and fill around and up the sides with the chipped stone. I urge you not to use landscaping fabric or weed barrier on the side. It's more of a lifetime pain in the butt than anything, and you will still get weeds in the rocks. Either pluck weeds out or spray individually with RoundUp or Weed-b-Gon to get rid of them.

We also had great success using the plastic paver base materials at Lowe's or Home Depot. They seem expensive, but they save soooo much time leveling and being careful when you put heavy stones onto sand. You would make the sand level(ish), lay the paver base, drop the pavers, and then fill around with the chipped stones.

EDIT: Now I see why everyone is complaining about pictures not posting. If the pictures don't appear in the next day or so, I'll link to external sites with the pictures.

Hi, thank you very much for the advice of both of you! Yes, about the side yard actually I just do small area of sod to link with the back yard and the rest I do the pavers and the stone. Here re the pics of the 2 kind of stone I m planning to do for the side, are they the one chipped stone you mentioned? If not right I have to look for the right chipped stone.

🔹About the top soil:
My soil looks quite dry, so can the sod survive without any top soil or fertilizer after installation?

🔹 About the sod?
1/ Buffalo: I have to

Here is a link to Apache Brown stone from Whitewater. It is much more faceted than your pictures. There are some color choices. If you visit them they will have all their stones in boxes for you to feel. Don't get overly excited if you do something like color match with paint chips, because the color of whatever they deliver will not match exactly whatever they have in the box.

🔹About the top soil:
My soil looks quite dry, so can the sod survive without any top soil or fertilizer after installation?

I would not add any topsoil unless you have a drainage problem which can only be corrected by adding top soil. Don't add soil just because everyone tells you to add it. They will have all kinds of good sounding reasons for adding it but don't. Buffalo grass is not very demanding in the way of nutrients. What I would do is use only organic fertilizers, and that will do much more to improve your soil than adding most any other amendments. If you read the ingredients on almost every organic fertilizer you will find stuff like soybean meal, cottonseed meal, corn meal, corn gluten meal, alfalfa meal, and other ground up nuts, beans, and seeds. The price for commercially bagged organic fertilizer is on the order of a dollar per pound. But if you shop at your local feed store you can find those same ingredients in plain brown bags for roughly twenty cents to fifty cents per pound. The application rate is the same and the results are the same. I've been using corn meal and alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) for 20 years and will never use chemical fertilizers again. In 2001 if someone had suggested to me that I'd convert over to organic I would have laughed out loud. It is very easy to try out, because you probably have corn meal or wheat flour in your kitchen. Drop a heaping handful on the grass (maybe your neighbor's grass), and come back in 3 weeks to see the green spot. I'll try again to post a demo picture.

If the picture sticks you will see a dark green patch of zoysia in the middle of a lawn. It is greener, denser, and taller than the surrounding grass. The picture was posted here in mid June 2011 by mrmumbles. He had used alfalfa pellets in that spot in mid May. The feed store most likely to have what I'm suggesting is All Seasons Hay. Anything from their small pet selection should be fine. Note that cats and dogs are not in the small pet category at a feed store. Small pets include fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc. Take the Calimesa exit on I-10 towards Redlands and they are right next to Tractor Supply on W Ave L.

🔹 About the sod?
1/ Buffalo: I have to

Your post trailed off without finishing the question.

@ dchall_san_antonio, Thank you very much! We found the crushed stone.

About the sod, I do want Buffal grass to save the water, however the landscapers here only offer Tall Fescue or Marathon II. Which one you think it s better for our location Zone 9b, Beaumont Ca 92223? Thank you very much!

Both of those grasses are tall fescue. Marathon I, II, and III are dwarf varieties of tall fescue. It looks surprisingly nice when it gets watered every day, but California cannot afford that turf. UC Verde can only be ordered and shipped to you. Google is your friend.

In my opinion fescue should be banned in California unless you live above 5,000 feet or if you live north of Redding or if you live within 1/2 mile of the beach. I believe the decades long use of Marathon varieties is a lot of what got California into the water shortage mess it's in. My college roommate lives in Huntington Beach and has a tall fescue lawn. He rarely waters because he gets that morning fog you hear about on TV weather (late night and early morning low clouds and fog near the coast clearing by eleven). If you lived in the Lake Arrowhead area you maybe could use fescue, but I'd be worried more about water evaporation at the altitude.

Did you go to Whitewater Stone? I was there once as a kid with my brother in law to pick up some sand for a concrete project. That was in the early 60s. I remember it as being completely covered in white dust to the point where you could barely read the signage.

I see the pictures finally appeared in my first post. Hope that helped.

Your local sod farms are right down 79 from you. If you're of a mind you could stop in and chat with the farmers. Do you speak Spanish? As I remember the workers speak Spanish. Don't know about the owners or if you'd see any owners around. Maybe call first. There are several turf farms in the Hemet/Winchester area. There are also hog farms so keep that in mind if you come across some strong odors.