I would suggest you call one of these nurseries and explain your project. All of these nurseries are VERY helpful and willing to share their vast knowledge.

Agrecol - Madison, WI 608-226-2544
Prairie Nursery - WEstfield, WI 800-476-9453
Spence Restoration Nursery - Muncie, IN no phone # on website

They all have websites that can easily be found through Google. Spence in particular has a lot of drainage info.

Good for you for looking for a better alternative to turf grass!

V.

You might want to get a restoration ecologist in for a consult. Union Gas, a utility company here is S Ontario used a tall grass meadow instead of turf for their corporate offices and dramatically cut their annual maintenance costs. Now established, their acre+ property requires only 10 person hours of weeding per year, basically a day in the spring. Turf would have required 2 to 3 hrs of weekly mowing plus fertilizing, watering and pesticide applications all season.

I have a small patch of buffalo grass in my front yard. I retain the previous season's dead grass until the new growth starts. It is dense enough to prevent most weeds.

Do you really want a grass that will be dead brown from october to may?

Just make sure that's what you really want before you plant. Also buffalo grass CAN be intolerant of midwestern climate.

There are some fescue/perennial rye strains that have been developed which are slower growing and more drought tolerant than the ususal lawn grass mix. You might want to investigate them.

have grown Bachloe with Bouteloua(blue grama)as it is slower to germinate and establish.Granite Seed states:"...slow to establish unless treated with potassium nitrate."
in agreement with Apcohrs' suggestions

jheyen
You may want to consider Carex spp instead, or in addition to buffalo grass. Buffalo grass is very picky in my yard. Needs to be well drained and full sun, croaks in any hint of shade.

Have you thought about a mix, instead of a straight mono culture. In the dry, sunny part of my yard, I've mixed buffalo grass, pasque flower and wild petunia. Other species prefer a more shaded area.
Lucent caused traffic jams and near miss car accidents with their Lisle/Naperville site (before they demolished it to put in a new building). It wasn't "pure" but they had included dame's rocket surrounded by a border of ox-eye daisy. They burned yearly and by year 3 I noticed less of the dame's rocket and ox-eye daisy. Apparently, it was put in to impress the uninformed.

I have contacted a few nurseries to see what kinds of information they can give me about buffalograss or other varieties and mixes. Airport design is very stringent as to the type of grass selected because you do not want to attract more wildlife to the area. Any type of native plant that may be a food soure must not be used. Also, because of the cover characteristics of some of the taller native plants I am limited to the height. The limited height, however, is an attractive selling point that I am going to mention to airport managers as a possible way for them to save money.

I am very interested to see what the nurseries have to say about my situation and will certainly post my findings here. Thank you for all of your help.