Creating and maintaining attractive and functional landscaping in your yard isn't always easy. It can be challenging to find the right plants and grasses to achieve the look you want.

Here are 3 ways St. Augustine grass will help solve your lawn care dilemmas:

Enjoying grass even when xeriscaping.

Homeowners in drought-prone areas who are tired of huge water bills and brown lawns have been pulling out their grassy lawns and planting native species of shrubs, flowers and grasses that thrive in arid conditions. Called xeriscaping, this landscaping method is a wonderful way to create a unique, one-of-a-kind lawn that doesn't need to be coddled.

Choosing to xeriscape doesn't mean you can't include small sections of standard grass in your garden plans. Planting small patches of green grass for active play, sunbathing, and pet exercise gives you the best of both worlds.

St. Augustine sod is a great choice for these small grassy areas, since it's drought tolerant and a good choice for pets. You can use plugs, but installing it as sod will give you an immediate green space with no bare spots.

Coloring your driveway green.

There's a small movement to remove cement and asphalt driveways and replace them with permeable, green driveways that appear more like part of the lawns than serviceable parking spots. There's less rain runoff for storm drains to deal with, they reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, and they help keep groundwater levels healthy.

There are a variety of ways to create green driveways, from loading up topsoil and planting seeds to laying down planting cells that hold seeds or grass plugs. Some homeowners keep two strips of concrete or pavers on their driveways for their tires to get traction, but plant the area between the strips and on either side of them with lush grass.

St. Augustine is a perfect choice for this type of driveway redo because the plugs can be easily planted in the driveway cells, but sod is also an option if the driveway has plenty of drainage and a good layer of healthy soil.

No more shady bald spots.

You probably love your big shade trees, but may not be so fond of the bald spots that develop underneath them. Some grasses want full sun, and they refuse to grow when they don't get it.

St. Augustine grass doesn't mind shade or sun one bit. In fact, it's the most shade-tolerant grass that's commercially available, making it a perfect choice for filling in bald spots in shady and sunny areas.

Be sure to restrain yourself when growing new patches of St. Augustine grass under your trees. You'll want to water the shady grass a bit less, mow it at a higher level than grass growing in the sun, and hold back on heavy fertilizers to reduce some of the stress brought on by growing in extreme shade.

Your turf and sod professionals are the best sources to find healthy St. Augustine seed, plugs, and sod to help you have the awesome lawn you've always wished you could grow.

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