Buffalo grass doesn't do well in shade, and it doesn't do well with frequent shallow watering. After its established, you will be watering every 2-3 weeks.

How about Desert Willow - it casts dappled shade, and it's capable of sucking up all the water you give it on whatever schedule. Messy with all the flowers, but the leaf drop is minimal until they suddenly all fall off after a frost.

After the initial establishment period, just soak the heck out of the trees root area every month or so and it will get the rest from the lawn watering.

Ah, I forgot all about Desert Willow... and we once considered planting a Chitalpa, but in a different part of the yard. Maybe that would work for us.

For some reason I thought buffalo grass had to be watered weekly during the summer, unless it rained. I can't remember where I read that (at the nursery perhaps?) Got some more research to do!

YOu will be watering more frequently the first months while the plugs establish themselves, but

I established a buffalo grass lawn 2 years ago, and wrote about it. See my blog: http://lazygardens.blogspot.com and search for Buffalo grass

http://lazygardens.blogspot.com/2009/07/watching-grass-grow-week-16-water.html covers the first-year watering.

Thanks for the great link! Lots of details. I especially like your "Confessing the Mistakes" post. In fact, I'm going to spread some more pre-emergent this weekend, just in case (we once had clumps of feral Bermudagrass all over the yard; got rid of them but I'm always afraid they'll come back.)

We'll also randomly mix in some blue grama plugs for that unkempt prairie look, and also to (hopefully) attract more bird species.

Where are you getting the Buffalo Grass? I had to import mine from Nebraska.

Make sure you have the Bermuda DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

We were going to go with High Country Gardens (Santa Fe, NM) but Civano Nursery here in Tucson started selling UC Verde grass recently. It's pricier, but no S&H ... on the other hand, I've not seen Blue Grama plugs sold locally, so we'll have to go through HCG for those. Basically, whichever ends up costing us less in the end!

Another advantage of buying from Civano is that you don't have to worry about heat and shipping. You can let them take care of it until you are ready.

We had to rush to get things going because the grass would have died in transit if we had waited.

Just came across this thread. Juttah, I'd love to hear how your Buffalo Grass lawn has held up over the past nine years. We are thinking of Buffalo Grass ourselves. Would you do it all over again if you could? Did you install UC Verde or Prestige?