If you have a heavily shaded area that you just simply can’t grow grass, ground covers look and work great. However, if you simply must have grass, than there are a couple of grass species that will do moderately well in shaded environments. In the Northern climates Creeping Red Fescue is the best shade tolerant turf and in the Southern climate St. Augustine performs the best. For CRF to survive it is important to quickly remove tree leaves in the fall. This is the only time of the year that the plant will see the full sun and you will want to maximize this. Keep the fertility low, the soil acidic and the turf as dry as possible. Also, neither of these turf species will handle traffic very well.
Trees vs Turf
