Native Grasses for Low-Water Colorado Lawns

The only native that behaves like a true lawn grass — it spreads by surface runners into a soft, gray-green, walkable turf. Established buffalograss survives on precipitation in a typical year and tolerates kids and dogs better than its delicate look suggests.

It wants full sun and goes golden-dormant from October to May. That dormant color is the tradeoff to make peace with before converting.

Colorado's state grass, instantly recognizable by seed heads that hang like eyelashes. Mixed with buffalograss it fills a lawn out and speeds establishment; left unmowed it reads as a soft meadow rather than turf.

It's a bunchgrass, so blends lean on buffalograss for the knit and blue grama for density and quick cover.

Not a mowing lawn — little bluestem is the accent and edge grass for native lawn projects: blue-green columns all summer, glowing copper-red through fall and winter. Use it in drifts along borders and slopes where the lawn transitions to beds.

It asks for nothing but sun and drainage, and it's at its best left standing all winter.