Hi Everyone. I've been referring to this site over and over again in trying to plan our new yard. So, I decided to register and bounce a few ideas off the experts here.

We have a newly constructed home on a bare lot on Albuquerque's West Side. The microclimate here is much different than on Albuquerque's older, East Side. Generally, because we are not against the mountain, we get less rain.

People often believe that Albuquerque is a smaller version of Phoenix. But it doesn't get nearly as hot in the summer and the winters are far cooler. Our elevation is roughly 5,700 feet above sea level. The cooler climate is attributable to the higher elevation.

The high temperatures in Albuquerque tend to top-out at 95, and the humidity is very low (usually below 20% year-round). In non-El Nino/La Nina years, we get hot during May and end with a "Monsoon" season in late August/September. Most of our rain occurs during that time. Temperatures in the fifties are common during summer nights.

The winters can be quite cold. Highs are usually in the upper forties and lows are in the twenties. There is variation with storms, of course. Snow does not tend to accumulate above two inches, and snow usually melts off by 10:00 am the next day. The City of Albuquerque owns almost no highway equipment for snow removal.

I plan on placing a sprinkler system. The initial planting area will be about 2500 square feet.

Following the advice of this site, the soil test is at the lab and I can hardly wait for it to come back. The land is principally silt and sand. Most of the folks here grow fescue, but as we plan to entertain and we have dogs, I would prefer to use a nice Bermuda that will hold up to traffic and provide a nice environment for the pets. The pets are being trained to use the rock/Xeriscape area.

You've already been helpful to me in ways you can hardly fathom. I'm hoping that by coming out of lurker status and inquiring directly, I can make my yard into everything we envisioned it would be.

Thanks in advance!

Welcome RoadRunner!

Thanks for the warm welcomes!

I prefer sod.
I can afford seed.

I don't mind planting and doing all the work on my own (I'm mostly concerned with the "thinking" part, which is why I am asking for help). I see myself spending a lot of time in the yard this summer, not just with the grass. So planting is just fine.

TW pinged to this thread

Not sure I can be a lot of help here. I live in Prescott AZ and the climate here is almost identical, but I have only been here for just over a year.

You are in between a Rock and a Hard Place. You are in a zone which is not either warm season grass or cool season grass. You get both extremes of hot and cold, and to make matters worse little rain fall, and pop corn dry fart air..

You need to ask yourself this question: Do you want a green lawn for 4 months out of the year during summer? Or about 6 months starting in Fall, Winter, and into Spring? You cannot really have both unless you want a full time job. I know it suks.

Here is the problem. All the warm season grasses do not require as much water as the cool season grasses, but will only be green during the warm months and will go dormant at first frost, and not turn green again until warm weather returns.

The cool season grasses require more water, will be green during the cooler and cold months, and need replanting about every fall, as the hot dry summers will do them in unless you can water a lot, and I mean a lot. Even if you can water a lot they still suffer in that high dry hot mountain air.

I maintain a golf course in Prescott AZ and the base grass is Bermuda, heavily over seeded with a blend of rye and fescue golf course varieties. However you do not want to do this because it requires a lot of work, fertilizer, and water. Or put another way professional care. Around here in Prescott, those that actually have lawns which are few, there are two basic lawn types of either Bermuda and Fescue with a smiggin of Buffalo grass. Some higher end homes have Bermuda and over seed in fall with Rye similar to what we do at the golf course..

Last comment is there a grass called Blue Gamma that grows well in the high elevations. It is a warm season grass that does well in cooler climates and does not require a lot of water. I know it is popular in high dessert areas like Salt Lake City and high plains. But I have no experience with it other than using it for pasture grass years ago in TX for hay. There are some varieties of it used for lawns.

OK one more comment. If you have full sun, do not want to fuss with watering and fertilizing, and don't mind a dormant lawn all winter, think Buffalo Grass. Extremely low maintenance but has to have FULL SUN and cannot compete with other grasses.

I hesitated in responding because I wasn't sure whether you'd be open to native grasses. But since TW brought it up . . .

If you're willing to go with a native grass, blue grama would probably be a fairly good choice. It's a warm season grass, but has a longer green period than most other warm season grasses. It's primarily a bunch grass, but does spread via tillers. If you mow it, it spreads more readily, especially at higher elevations.

Another option would be western wheatgrass. It can be difficult to establish, but it has fairly low water requirements (only slightly more than grasses like blue grama and buffalo grass). It's considered a cool season grass, but is more tolerant of warm weather than most cool season grasses. It spreads somewhat aggressively (by native grass standards, anyway) via rhizomes. One drawback to it is that it is somewhat blue-grey in color.

Thanks for all of the responses!

Buffalo Grass and Blue Gamma are a couple of the options I had considered. Neither stand up well to foot traffic. And, though I find them to be beautiful, my wife does not care for their appearance much.

For me, the decision came down to the warm versus cold climate grasses. I think I've settled on Bermuda because it holds up very well to foot traffic, and will be fine in dormancy when it will just be me and the dogs roaming on it.

We intend to use our lawn for entertaining in the summer. I think the colder climate grasses would be fine as there really is no major heat in Albuquerque. But I think the water is a major consideration and I prefer the appearance of Bermuda.

Can either of you recommend a cold-tolerant Bermuda? I am looking at Yukon, but I am not yet ready to pull the trigger.

Hopefully by the end of next week I will have a soil analysis returned to me by the lab at NM State University down in Las Cruces.

Just a word about using the Las Cruces lab. While most people think that a soil test is a soil test, the truth is that they use different tests in different ways, and we need to be pretty conservative with a set of lab results from a lab we don't (that includes Las Cruces). If a few extra $$$ isn't a deciding factor, we prefer Logan Labs (preferred) or UMASS. Too often with other labs, the results won't fill all the needed fields in my spreadsheets and the Owner is disappointed - and then runs a second set of tests --- extra $$$.

OK let's talk Bermuda for a moment. That is one grass I know a little bit about.

Yukon is an improved common type of Bermuda grass developed by Oklahoma State University along with Riviera Bermuda. They were developed for the transition zones where cold winters are the norm. However that does not mean it is the best cold weather performer.

Cold weather tolerance is measured by 3 characteristics of:

Winter Kill = Ability to survive freezing ground
Frost Tolerance = Ability of the grass to stay green after a frost before going dormant.
Spring Green Up = How early will green up in spring.

So with that in mind let me throw 3 Bermuda varieties are you. One is a hybrid called TifSport, and 2 common types of Yukon and Riviera. What follows is the NTEP rankings.

Frost Tolerance

TifSport #1
Yukon # 11
Riviera #22

So th econclusion you can draw here is Tifsport will stay greener longer in the fall

Winter Kill

Riviera #7
Tifsport # 10
Yukon #15

So from this you can conclude Riviera will survive the coldest winters of the 3 listed.

Spring Green Up

Riviera #3
Yukon #5
Tifsport #11

So from this you can conclude Riviera will green up first in the spring.

So like I tell everyone one if you are going to go with common seeded types use a blend. In your case Yukon and Riviera. If you want sod go with either TifSport or Tifway-II

@Andy: I was not aware of this. NM State University has an elaborate county extension service, so I figured it would be just fine. I do statistics for a living so I am wondering how much variation to expect.

@TexasWeed: Those nuggets are valuable. Do you buy blends or buy them separately and blend them on your own?

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It's not "variability" - it's often a different suite of tests (each lab has its own suite) and different test methods. We don't have the kind of time to research each lab's test suite and methods, so we err on the conservative side. I have never seen the Las Cruces results, so I have no idea what to expect.

You would need to blend your own.

I'm a little late... But am fairly familiar with Prescott and Albuquerque (I live in Flagstaff). Our native meadow grass is blue grama, overwhelmingly. Here it does not green up until early June and browns out again in mid-September. But in Albuquerque I can see adding a month to each end of that green period.

I ordered Legacy Buffalo Grass from High Country Gardens over in Santa Fe; we are definitely above the recommended elevation as the grass has barely spread beyond its original planting spots. However, each plug that "took" sent out very long aggressive stolons. I am not having winter die-back, I am having winter dog trampling when it is dormant. It seems to regrow every year from the roots. At our altitude the natural meadows are able to be warm-season grass because they are not trampled by dogs or overgrazing cattle. But not so much in a lawn setting.

All that being said, I would be very tempted at your elevation to give Legacy a shot, it does not grow tall, and reminds me very much of the bermuda commonly used down in Phoenix.