Blue Fescue develops extensive root systems no matter how you start the plants. I've pulled 1 year old volunteers which had enough rootmass to fill a 2 gallon planter. Conservatively, they have 3-4 times as much plant below the surface as above.

I just finished digging all my in-ground Blue Fescue and tossed them. The only ones left are small newbies in containers, and I'm going to trim them before they have a chance to re-seed. I'll be I pulled or dug 1,000 volunteers a year for the past few years. I've kept a few really deep blue ones for containers, but that's it.

I have an elongated U-shaped bed along my chain link fence - probably about 100 feet or so all told. I have planted a few clumps of the blue fescue over the last 5 years and have only had 2 or 3 volunteers. I started a grass and rock garden in one of the corners of the "U", with a few flowering shrubs and edged the garden with the fescue plants. Funny how the same plant behaves differently in a different environment.

I always had trouble with blue fescue. The culprit was Junebug grubs. I don't have them now so much since I got rid of the bermuda lawn but they used to be everywhere. The grubs seemed to especially love the blue fescue and would get under a nice mature established plant and girdle away the roots. Suddenly one day, you would notice the grass looked "sick". Then they'd get another, and then another......

You could always just pull up the whole clump like a hat and there would be a concave area where one grub was feeding. If you see a lot of them in the soil where you are planting, you might want to take action. I never had trouble with other ornamental grasses but I always did with that one. My sister in Kansas had the same experience.