On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 7:43:48 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 17:57:00 -0400, slate_leeper
wrote:

For a mostly-shady but heavily traveled (by my dogs) area?
Northeastern Tennessee near the Virginia border.
Zoysia should grow there. It's in the "transition zone" but it should
go. Zoysia is dense, wear resistant, drought resistant and will take
over anything in its path. Great stuff but if you have flower beds,
they need a *good* border. If it's kept healthy, you'll never see
another weed. Keep it cut or you're going to need a sharp sickle.
It's dense stuff.

It grows fine here in NJ, if you want it. Biggest negative aside from it
invading everywhere is that it's straw colored from Oct thru April while
cool season grasses are green and growing. So you have about 3 months
more of it dormant and looking like crap. Good cool season grasses
have some green most of the winter.

I just used some shade seed mix from Tractor Supply for the backyard.
It was highly rated and so far it's coming in nicely. They had it at a
good price. Depends on how much
shade he has too. If it's not dense shade then a good tall fescue product
would work, it's tough, used on sports fields, etc. When buying seed you
need to be careful and read the label. In recent years, the new scam is to
coat seed. That can be a good thing, but the way they charge, it's not really.
You pay for 7 lbs of a product, but only 3 lbs of it is seed and they charge as
much or more per actual pound as pure seed. I avoid it. Pure seed should
cost him $3 a pound or less, that's a good deal. Except for bluegrass. That
seed is so tiny that you get a lot more seed per pound.