USDA Hardiness Zone · 10° to 20°F
Lawn care in USDA zone 8
Warm winter with rare freezes, long hot summer. Warm-season grasses (bermuda, zoysia, centipede, bahia, St. Augustine) dominate; tall fescue persists in shade with irrigation. Lawns go dormant November–March and green up by April. Pre-emergent crabgrass control is the spring priority.
Example metros: Dallas TX · Phoenix AZ · Charleston SC · Mobile AL
Lawn grasses that grow here
7 grass types survive zone 8. Pick yours for the 12-month schedule.
Tall Fescue
cool-seasonTall fescue is the cool-season grass of the transition zone, deep-rooted, heat-tolerant for a cool-season species, and shade-tolerant.
Bermuda Grass
warm-seasonBermuda is the workhorse warm-season lawn of the South: heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant, traffic-tolerant, and aggressively self-repairing via both stolons and rhizomes.
Zoysia
warm-seasonZoysia is the premium warm-season grass: denser, more shade-tolerant, and more cold-hardy than bermuda, but slower to establish and slower to recover from damage.
St. Augustine
warm-seasonSt.
Centipede
warm-seasonCentipede is the "lazy lawn" of the Coastal Plain South: low-fertility, low-mow, slow-growing, light-green.
Bahia
warm-seasonBahia is a tough, drought-tolerant warm-season grass dominant on roadsides and unirrigated rural lawns through Florida and the Gulf Coast.
Buffalo Grass
warm-seasonBuffalo grass is the native short-grass-prairie species: the only warm-season grass that survives zone 4 winters, and the only low-input lawn grass adapted to the Great Plains.