Something selected for orchard use.

Your blackberries will probably come back, your weeds will take over, and your vole population will explode. Been there, done that. Mowing holds all those things in check.

Thanks for your suggestions. We decided on a mix of 45% perinnial ryegrass, 45% red fescue, and 10% bentgrass. We are planning to mow it a few times per season to keep the weeds and blackberries from growing back, and was told that these grasses would not grow higher than 18" - 24". Does anyone have experience with something like this?

Yeap - we planted a couple different types to test them before going head on to larger areas.

The fescues do need more mowing if you are planning on a low maintenance area. But like the earlier post - the blackberry plants will re-shoot.

The shorter of the 2 low maintenance grasses was from NoMowGrass.com and once we did a first year maintenance on it, we haven't done much in the last few years. I actually haven't thought about it till we started thinking about planting grass in the woods.

The only problem we had with either was that fescues can be toxic to certain animals. Both didn't need watering or fertilizer and the fescue only needed a mowing every month to keep it in check (the bentgrass from NoMowGrass only got mowed once in spring and once in fall).

I do have to say though, the bentgrass is very soft and cool "cushy" to walk on bare foot.

Here is a link that might be useful: NoMowGrass.com