Native Plants

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Sunday - November 16, 2014

From: Austin, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Planting, Shade Tolerant, Grasses or Grass-like
Title: Shade grasses for central Texas
Answered by: Guy Thompson

QUESTION:

We are new to the area and bought a home this summer that has lots of shade in the very small backyard. The problem is that there was new sod laid in the backyard which now is 50% dead. We do not know if there was not enough water or died because of shade. We have a larger dog so having grass for the dog to use is very important. We did hire an arborist about 6 weeks ago to trim trees. The backyard is to the west and there are numerous large slanting live oaks. What is the best shade grass to plant? The sunlight is only filtered through the trees. Is having any grass grow possible? How do we evaluate sunlight? What type of grass would you recommend? There is still some thin grass remaining on one section that they planted but we can not figure out what kind it is? Thank you for your advice.

ANSWER:

Unfortunataely, there are no good native turf grasses that do well in shade. You may have had St. Augustine sod (that is a non-native which does fairly well in light shade, but we don't recommend it because of the high amount of water it requires).

One grass that I grow in shade as a ground cover is Paspalum setaceum (Thin paspalum). It grows only a few inches high and the rather unattractive foot-tall seed heads can be controlled by mowing. If you and your dog can accept taller species, consider the following suggestions, taken from a previous Mr. Smarty Plants answer:

Bouteloua curtipendula (sideoats grama), the State Grass of Texas, 2-3 feet

Bouteloua hirsuta (hairy grama), 10-18 inches

Chasmanthium latifolium (Inland sea oats), 2-4 feet, a particularly attractive plant

Elymus canadensis (Canada wildrye), 2-4 feet

Poa arachnifera (Texas bluegrass), 2-3 feet

Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem), 2-4 feet

You might also consider using sedges. They make very good groundcovers and they tend to be rather short. You can read about their use for lawns in Sedge Lawns for Every Landscape by John Greenlee.

Carex blanda (eastern woodland sedge), 1-3 feet

Carex cherokeensis (Cherokee sedge), 12-18 inches

Carex planostachys (cedar sedge), less than 12 inches

Carex texensis (Texas sedge), 10-12 inches

Finally, here are groundcovers that aren't grasses or grass-like, are less than 18 inches high and will grow in the shade or part shade.

Seeds for many of these plants may be obtained at your local plant nurseries. Native American Seed is a particularly good source.

Calyptocarpus vialis (straggler daisy)

Phyla nodiflora (turkey tangle fogfruit)

Geum canadense (white avens)