Pros:
Can't think of any really.

Cons:
1. Bermuda grass in in the same genus as that plant from the The Little Shop of Horrors. Instead of eating people though, this species tries to eat your flowerbeds and even small shrubs. It's obscenely aggressive.
2. It looks bad enough during dryer periods in summer, but it looks totally dead all winter.
3. When you mow, little sprigs will pop up after you've passed over them and make the grass look uneven. Raking (leaves, whatever) intensifies this effect.
4. It's impossible to have a neat edge along a sidewalk or driveway from more than a day or two after you edge/trim.
5. I'm sure there are many more, but these are enough for me to hate Bermuda with a passion. It ranks right up there with poison ivy, for me.

I'd list hard to kill as a con too....a waste of my glyphosate. (-;

Wow, you guys really are anti-Bermudamites:)

Thanks for the thoughts. Do you guys have experience with it?

Experience with it??? Are you KIDDING? (*grin*) Haven't lived in TN long, have you?

If there was no Japanese honeysuckle or kudzu, Bermuda grass would be the Curse of the South.

I have all three Judy, at least the honeysuckle smells good.

Tnjdm it is actually listed as an invasive weed that was introduced, that us southerners have to deal with. A woman once told me you could dig a trench around your flower beds to help keep out the bermuda. Well I haven't figured out how deep to dig that trench cause it doesn't seem to be working for me. The runners on that junk are feet long. Hard to pull by hand, and your not going to use a pick to get it out. Shovel and dig and don't dare leave any behind!!

Welcome to tennessee!! :D

We had Bermuda in our grass at our last house (well, we have it at this one too). It was slowly invading one of my flower beds. My aunt bought our house when we moved. Two years after she bought it, the Bermuda was so out of control in the front bed that my mom ended up digging out that entire bed and using Roundup when strays would appear. She had to repeat this process three times over a period of a year before she felt like the Bermuda was sufficiently killed to replant the bed.

It is evil.

I do have one pro for Bermuda - it stands up to very heavy dog traffic. We have two large dogs with whom we play daily fetch with in the backyard. They had obliterated the grass in our other backyard. Nothing left. They also took out a large, mature stand of Ajuga and Monkey Grass. These dogs are not kidding around, I'm telling you. :)

Three years after moving, we still have grass in back. For this reason, I would never want to lose it back there. Yes, it invades the beds and is brown and ugly during the winter, but at least it's something. That, though, is the only pro.

I had a mostly fescue lawn until I started cutting my Mom's grass after my Dad died. I have a 1 acre lot and I carried b*****a seed from her lawn to mine. That was about 13 years ago and my lawn now is about 80% b*****a. Actually I kind of like it or maybe it's just the fact that I don't have the money or the time to fight it so I accept it. It is a fast growing grass and covers bare spots quickly. It will also invade the edges of a flower bed in just a week or two if you do not properly maintain you yard. I keep the edges of my beds sprayed with weed killer creating a 6 to 8 inch area of "no mans land". It's not as attractive as other peoples beds but between the weed killer and a weekly trimming with my weed eater I have fairly maintainance free beds. It turning brown in the winter does not bother me.

jim_6b

I haven't been on here in awhile, but saw this topic and had to see if everyone else hates it as much as I do. Apparently, I have company. I just cringe when I see it in the stores for sale.

Great input from all. I am a little shocked since battling fescue in the summer, weeds, etc is better to most.......

Fescue doesn't put out the runners like bermuda. When I say feet long runners I am not kidding and then it attaches and grows a long root that is hard to pull. Imagine that in your garden!! If you don't pull it the root gets deeper and even harder to pull out. A flower bed or a vegetable garden can be overgrown with bermuda in a season like you never tilled it if your not careful.

I'm with Jim 6b. I have bermuda in the back yard and as a path between flower beds. It's easy, green, and I just spray a 'no man's land' around the beds to keep it out. I want to focus my time on the flowers and this is sort of a soothing rest for the eye.

The runners that Bermuda produces transplant nicely to bare, clay areas in my yard where nothing else will grow.

jim_6b

My elderly neighbor stopped by one day, while I was furiously attacking the bermuda in my garden. Said her mother told her, the only effective way to get rid of it was to MOVE.

When I mo;ved here to Jackson, I thought I could cut the Bermuda with my self-propelled 6.5 h.p. mower. Ha- the grass was so thick and wiry that I had to invest in a lawn tractor. My last home had kentucky blue,the most beautiful grass there is.This bermuda is impossible, it will actually grow across a side walk to get to my flower gardens. Pull it out? impossible. Those runners beneath the soil must go to China. My grandsons have a contest to see who can get the longest one out without breaking it(one way to get it out of the flower beds) To say I hate bermuda is putting it mildly, it is devil grass!

After struggling (and failing) to keep a fescue lawn alive the past two summers, I'm looking at the bermuda patches with a little less animosity. Sure they turn brown in the winter, but that brown isn't mud like the rest of my yard has been.

If the 200lbs of Kentucky 31 I put out this spring (plus another 150 last Fall) don't survive this year, I may be planting bermuda...

Even with the cons listed here, I'm still going to give it a shot on a portion of my lawn. Just tired of fighting to keep fecue alive. If the experiment fails, I'll get it ripped out and move on. Have the one I'm using picked out, just a matter of the landscaper starting.

"If the experiment fails, I'll get it ripped out and move on."

ROFL! I hope you know where to rent bulldozers cheap. Oh, and you better get permission from your neighbors to do their yards too. By the time you get it ripped out (if your neighbors don't already have it), they'll be infested with it too. Remove yours and the remainder from your neighbors will get homesick and return to your yard in no time at all. If you don't already have Bermuda grass, the decision as to whether to get it may be more of a final decision that some imagine. Phyllostachys dactylon (I mean Cynodon dactylon) can be almost impossible to get rid of permanently.

I'm with Brandon on this - it's a monster! Bermuda, poison ivy, and Johnson grass.

Most of the folks in my neighborhood that like their bermuda and zoysia lawns are NOT gardeners. But a few cautious Pros: It is very drought tolerant, resilient and will quite literally grow on concrete. Weed control maintenance seems to require fewer chemicals than fescue since it is better and more aggressive at choking out the competition. Hard to kill, unless you use the right concentration of Round-up. I do not know of a foolproof way to grow it responsibly, meaning to prevent it from escaping into the neighbors, or the wild places. Now, most of the gardeners that seem to have positive feelings about bermuda still tend control it diligently, chemically, and seem to be WAY more organized than I'll ever be.

I have a fescue lawn that is much healthier than my neighbors because I seeded with Southern Gold and Rebels instead of the standard Kentucky31, and I've improved my soil beyond the skimpy topsoil left by the builders. I continue to consistently feed the soil with whatever organic material I can scavenge. If this sounds like a lot of work, it isn't really. Whenever I weed my beds, deadhead, etc, instead of those materials going into a compost bin, they just get thrown onto the lawn and shredded with the mower. (I try to keep unsightly stick type stuff like old cornstalks in the back lawn since they don't turn to confetti right away.) In the fall I mow in my neighbors bagged leaves. It mulches and composts right onto the lawn, and so far, I've not had thatch build up at all!

I have used Ornamec with promising results. It's designed to kill bermuda without harming other plants and works well in beds and ornamental plantings that don't contain a desirable grass. In fescue lawns, you must use a lower concentration so that you merely stress the fescue without killing it too. When I used it last year, it killed about 70% of the bermuda, and then I had to wait for the right growing window to reapply. I'm hopeful that applying this spring and again in the fall that it'll finally be gone. If it works I'll shout it from the rooftops!!!

Another thing I noticed yesterday in the Bermuda pro column.

Zero dandelions in the Bermuda grass. Zero.
It won't tolerate competition. :-)

Dandelions are happy in my Bermuda grass, and a quick look around confirms I'm not alone. A lawn full of Bermuda and dandelions is the norm here in East Tennessee.

Really appreciate all this input. A couple of great points.

My only Neighbor with grass between us is 50 to 70 yeards away with a vacant field between us, so no problem there. Also, they do no lawn maintenance (nothing but weeds) other than mow. I am not much of a gardner with flower beds. I do have concrete curb around the house with plants in it (about 80 ft), and have buried a barrier about 4" down along the inside.

I have been doing extensive studies on all grasses. Being living things, they alll have there pros and cons......

You know... if I had my choice and didn't live in a neighborhood with an evil HOA, I'd have a lawn of pure clover. It's evergreen, spreads quickly, becomes dense yet is still easy to mow, even with the reel-style mower. Doesn't need great soil to thrive. Much easier to pull out of unwanted areas. Plus it blooms alot, feeding the bees and butterflies. But one of the best traits is that it is immensely drought tolerant, possibly equal to bermuda. Just thought I'd throw out an option a little outside the box:)

Its considered evil here in Israel, where it's known as "yablit." "yablit" means blister in hebrew. I suppose people got blisters trying to dig this stuff out. Super drought tolerant - will survive with zero irrigation in an arid climate. Its planted along roadsides here for erson control. Forms a dense, thick mat. My father says that my grandfather used to seek out bermudagrass patches for his horses who loved the stuff. I don't know if it will make an attractive lawn. It's growth habit is not that tidy. That said, if they use it for golf courses in the states, it must be suitable. I am not going to let it become my lawn, as easy as that would be, because its so invasive.

Asaf, that's interesting to know. My neighbor here in Tn. (I don't live too far from brandon7 TN - one of the posters above) has it in his lawn directly next to my vegetable garden. I have spent numerous days removing the runners as they encroach my garden. Each year I now plant a buffer-zone of sunflowers and mulch them with a thick layer of hay. It helps, but it's not a perfect solution. This year I'm going to try to create a 4" deep bare-soil edge along the neighbor's side of the sunflower border and see if that works. I've read that it works, but I have my doubts.

I recently read about vetiver grass. Its perennial, and has roots that go down 2-4 meters. It forms a good vertical barrier, and does not spread horizontally. Perhaps it can block the bermudagrass, while also serving as a good source of mulch + fragrant roots. http://www.kdhptea.com/venture/vetiver-grass-technology/ https://permaculturenews.org/forums/index.php?threads/vetiver-grass.1676/