Tall fescue: best cool-season grass for transition zone

Festuca arundinacea is the grass I'd plant if I were starting my Long Island lawn from scratch today. It handles drought better than Kentucky bluegrass, tolerates more shade, and doesn't build thatch the way bluegrass does. The trade-off: it spreads by bunch growth rather than rhizomes, so it can't.

Festuca arundinacea is the grass I'd plant if I were starting my Long Island lawn from scratch today. It handles drought better than Kentucky bluegrass, tolerates more shade, and doesn't build thatch the way bluegrass does. The trade-off: it spreads by bunch growth rather than rhizomes, so it can't repair bare spots on its own and requires overseeding every few years to stay dense.

I don't have a pure tall fescue stand — my lawn mixes tall fescue with fine fescue — but I've watched turf-only tall fescue lawns on the sandy loam soils here perform through droughts that sent neighboring bluegrass lawns into full dormancy.

Species identification

Modern tall fescue sold for lawns is dramatically different from the coarse forage types (Festuca arundinacea var. arundinacea) that gave the species a bad name. Turf-type and dwarf turf-type cultivars have finer texture, darker color, and slower vertical growth. Per NC State TurfFiles, "turf-type" varieties were developed specifically for residential and athletic turf beginning in the 1970s and now dominate the seed market.