elginagent, I don't know about the bermuda "sucking up water" part, but the stuff is definitely invasive. If you only plan to have lawn, right up to the walls of the house and don't care that it will look very brown and dead in the winter, then plant Bermuda. But if you want to have some beds with shrubbery or a perrenial border, and you want to see a green lawn in winter, plant fescue. Because trying to have flower beds and a bermuda lawn will let you in for a ton of frustration. You'll be constantly fighting it--and there isn't a bed border made that will keep the stuff out, because not only does it spread by runner but it also seeds--and the runners are strong enough to pierce a double layer of good quality weed matting Good luck

Bermuda may be good for something.......but I haven't figured out what yet! It will take over the entire yard and is almost impossible to get rid of. I would never ever plant it intentionally. I feel a little strongly about it....I now have it here and there and fight it constantly.

If I were starting a lawn from scratch, I would check into some native grass types such as Buffalo Grass.

Here's an article on choosing lawn grass in Arkansas. I glanced at a couple articles and one said that Bermuda is the most commonly planted there. You may eventually have that anyway if you plant something else.

Here is a link that might be useful: Choosing a grass for Akansas lawns

Here's another article on seeding a lawn.
Congrats on your new home by the way and welcome.

Here is a link that might be useful: Seeding a Lawn in Arkansas

make sure you don't get any kudzu mixed in there!

william

Bermuda grass is the kudzu of the midsouth. It's hateful stuff. Be careful with fescue, too. Some of it is coarse and grows faster than I want to mow. There is a lawn forum here on garden web. It might give you some ideas as to what to plant.
Anise

True, bermuda is very invasive. Fescue, however is not a cureall. It is a cool season grass, and will look like crap in the summer. It never forms a good turf, and must be over-seeded every October. To keep it green in warm weather you'll have to really pour the water on it. It just gets too hot here for it to thrive.

First off, if you've got much shade, you'll never have a lush lawn. The trees soak up all the light and water. If you can afford it, zoyzia is the way to go. St. Augustine is really nice in a semi-shaded lawn, but it may be questionably winter hardy (assuming that we'll ever get a real winter again.)

I've had good luck with a native, poverty grass. It's fairly evergreen, and grows in dry shade, quite the feat. It's a clumping grass, so it won't spread about from rhizomes, but with persistance you can get a decent stand. I've never seen seeds for sale, so every other year I let the seeds mature in late spring/early summer, then sow them where I want it to grow. Don't know how well this works, but I'm slowly getting my wishes.

Whatever you decide, you should plant a cool season grass this fall to hold the soil over winter (turf tall fescue, creeping red fescue, or annual ryegrass), or lay some sod on your lawn. Sod can be laid year round, but I don't recomend doing it in dormant season, because you might have some suprises when it greens up as to quality of the grass and the presence of winter weeds. If you decide on bermuda, you can seed this in April/May. Bermuda can be seeded, but zoysia, centipede or st. augustine are best from sod.

I have no problem with bermuda..lawn of choice here. I guess, coming from Texas, we were used to the coastal type and chose the bermuda to plant here because of it's drought tolerance. I have a lot of bed (perenniels, roses, etc) that the bermuda used to be a problem in until I found Fluazifop-p-butyl (aka known as Ortho's Grass-B-Gone and Fertilome's Over The Top). It's an over the top spray that will only kill the bermuda in the beds and in 6 years, I've never had a problem with it hurting anything else (caveat..not for use around ornamental grasses..read the label attached). Sure has made life easier for me and now I can enjoy the lawn!

Paul, I'd like to hear more about your native poverty grass. Is it AR native? How did you get your first start? Does it grow fast(in height)? Do you know if wildlife like it? Is that enough questions to start with? Save the seed, sell it and make a fortune.LOL
vickie

Vickie, I'd be suprised if you didn't have this grass already in your yard. In Summer it's fairly dormant, but still green. Just a round clump of green grass that doesn't grow, and the tips are probably brown. It will be the height of whatever you mowed it, or if not mowed, it will be maybe 6 -12 inches high with the dried seeds over it. It will pick back up when (if) the weather cools and the rains start back. I'm not certain as to the species. I've tried to key it out, but my grass ID skills are somewhat lacking. A "real" botanist called it "poverty grass" or "pubic grass" (due to it's curly appearance). Obviously neither of these would be a good marketing name. Perhaps we should call it "carefree grass". That has a certain ring to it.

Edwin Smith's book AN ATLAS AND ANNOTATED LIST OF THE VASCULAR PLANTS OF ARKANSAS lists several grasses of the Sporobolus genus with S. neglectus and S. vaginiflorus listed under the common names "poverty grass, and poverty dropseed". My hunch is it's something in the Sporobolus genus, as there are several species listed. By the way, the Smith book is out of print, but we should have a real Flora of Arkansas book in the next couple of years. I can't wait! I've been using my old Steyermark "Flora of Missouri" book since college (now out of print, replaced by 2 volumes) and it will be great to have a real flora of Arkansas.

I'm going to do a Google search for seeds. It's a great grass and I'd love to plant my whole non-bedded yard in it. Maybe someday I can sell seeds of "Carefree Grass" and make my fortune. I'll give you a cut Vickie.

Sorry for digging up an old thread but I am having the same debate with my wife and neighbors here in KS. Around here the big thing is Fescue...Fescue Fescue Fescue. And Bermuda is thought of as more of a weed.

....and I couldn't disagree more. My appologies to the Bermuda haters....but Fescue is horrible. Right now I live in a neighborhood where the HOA mandates that all yards be Fescue.

The problems I have with fescue are that it requires a huge supply of water to live. Basically if you don't have a sprinkler system or you aren't out there watering before the sun comes up your yard is going to die eventually....especially if you're going through a drought like we are right now.

We moved here from Fort Worth, TX where the summer climate is surprisingly similar to southern KS. Down there it's Bermuda Bermuda Bermuda. It requires very little water to survive. We had a sprinkler system and yet we seldom ever turned it on except for late July and August when it got the hottest (and sometimes when watering in Fertilizer and other yard treatments). And our yard looked great!

One of the neighbors brought up that it goes dormant earlier and comes out of dormancy later than fescue. OK I'll concede that this is true. So I found a house here in my town that has bermuda (much to their neighbors' dismay I'm sure) and I kept an eye on it to see how much longer it took them to green up than the fescue lawns around it. 2 weeks later. I guess if you want to obsess over a few weeks of not being green that's your call....

I guess I'm stuck with fescue so I don't break the HOA rules....but I sure wish I had fescue because it sure makes more sense to me....at least for here anyway....