Lawn Care
Best grass seed for shade
Every shade bag claims shade tolerance. One of them publishes a percentage — and an hours-of-sun floor you can measure against your own yard.
Affiliate disclosure: we earn a commission if you buy through our links, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which product we rank first — here is how we're funded.
We have not tested these units. Every spec on this page comes from the manufacturer's own documentation and is linked to it. Every computed figure is arithmetic you can redo. Prices are checked daily — last verified January 1, 1970. Here is exactly how we pick.
Quick picks
Ranked on the published specs and the arithmetic below. Tap any row to jump to the full write-up. We have not tested these units -- here is exactly how we pick.
| # | Product | Best for | Score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No photo Jonathan Green Black Beauty Dense Shade Grass Seed The only bag here that puts a number on the shade it will take -- up to 70% -- and asks for four hours of sun instead of six. | Best shade tolerance | 8.9 | |
| 2 | No photo Scotts Turf Builder Grass Seed Sun & Shade Mix Five named species and a 4-0-0 analysis on the bag, at the price of needing half again as much seed per square foot. | Best species disclosure | 8.3 | |
| 3 | No photo Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed Half the seed per thousand square feet of the mass-market bag, on a tall fescue base that publishes its species list. | Best coverage per pound | 8.6 |
#ad Buy links are affiliate links. Prices come from a live daily check; where we have no verified price we say "check price" rather than print a stale one.
"Shade tolerant" is on almost every bag of grass seed sold. One of the three here attaches a number to it, and one publishes an hours-of-sunlight floor you can check against your own yard with nothing more than an afternoon and a notebook.
The short answer
Measure the hours before you buy the bag
The single most useful thing you can do before spending money on shade seed is to sit and watch the patch for a day. Direct sun, not brightness. Four hours is the floor Jonathan Green publishes; below it, seed is not the problem you are solving.
Three bags on published figures
| Spec | JG Dense Shade | Scotts Sun & Shade | JG Black Beauty Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shade tolerance | Up to 70% shade | Not published | Rated excellent by the maker |
| Sunlight required | 4+ hours per day | Not published | 6+ hours per day |
| Species | Tall fescues, fine fescues, perennial ryegrass | KBG, perennial rye, creeping red, chewings and hard fescue | Tall fescues, KBG, perennial ryegrass |
| Germination | 14-21 days | About 6-12 days to first sprouts | 7-14 days |
| New lawn rate | 3.33 lb / 1,000 sq ft | 7.5 lb / 1,000 sq ft | 5 lb / 1,000 sq ft |
| Overseed rate | 1.67 lb / 1,000 sq ft | 2.5 lb / 1,000 sq ft | 2.5 lb / 1,000 sq ft |
| Bag sizes | 1, 3, 7, 25 lb | 2.4, 5.6, 16, 32 lb | 1, 3, 7, 25, 50 lb |
| Seed treatment | Not published | Fungicide-treated | Not published |
Transcribed from Black Beauty Dense Shade, Scotts Turf Builder Sun & Shade and Black Beauty Ultra. Rates per 1,000 sq ft are our arithmetic from each maker's coverage table.
1. Jonathan Green Black Beauty Dense Shade — the only published number
Up to 70% shade, 4+ hours of sun, tall and fine fescues with perennial ryegrass, and the lightest new-lawn rate on any bag table in our registry, matched only by the Sunny mix from the same maker. Going down thinner under a canopy is deliberate: seedlings competing for scarce light do worse crowded than spaced.
Fine fescues are the reason this bag works. They are the most shade-tolerant cool-season grasses available, and they are also the least wear-tolerant — which is fine under a tree, where nobody plays football anyway.
The cost is time. Fourteen to twenty-one days to germinate means three weeks of keeping the surface damp, in the part of the yard where leaf litter falls. Seed it in the fall window, not into summer heat.
#ad Check the Jonathan Green Black Beauty Dense Shade Grass Seed price on Amazon — how we're funded.
2. Scotts Turf Builder Sun & Shade — five species, treated seed
Five named species including three fine fescues, fungicide-treated seed, a published 4-0-0 analysis and a 60F to 80F seeding temperature window. For a lawn that is part shade and part open — which most lawns are — one bag across the whole thing is a defensible choice.
Two things against it here. Scotts publishes no shade percentage and no sunlight-hours figure, so there is nothing to check your patch against. And at 7.5 lb per 1,000 sq ft for a new lawn it asks for more than twice the seed of the Dense Shade bag.
The fungicide treatment is a genuine advantage in a wet spring, where damping-off takes seedlings before they are established.
#ad Check the Scotts Turf Builder Grass Seed Sun & Shade Mix price on Amazon — how we're funded.
3. Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra — the one to buy by mistake
Jonathan Green rates Ultra's shade tolerance as excellent and then asks for six hours of sunlight a day. Both statements are on the product page and both are true — the grass tolerates shade well for a sun mix, and it still needs six hours.
It is the right bag for a lawn with some dappled shade and plenty of open sky, and it germinates in 7-14 days rather than 14-21. It is the wrong bag under a mature maple, and the shade rating on the front is exactly how people end up buying it for one.
#ad Check the Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed price on Amazon — how we're funded.
Seeding a shady patch
- Seed in the fall window. Mid-August to mid-October for cool-season grass, when leaf cover is thinning and the soil is still warm.
- Rake the litter off first. Seed needs soil contact, and a shaded lawn usually has a mat of leaves and moss over it.
- Keep it damp for three weeks, not one. The germination window is twice a sun mix's. How to overseed covers the watering.
- Mow high. A taller blade catches more light, which is the entire problem you are solving.
What we cannot tell you
We have not grown these seed mixes side by side. No maker publishes species percentages, cultivar names or endophyte content, so we cannot tell you how much fine fescue is actually in either shade-oriented bag. Nobody publishes a germination rate or a purity percentage on the product page either — those figures are on the bag tag, which you cannot read before you buy.
The picks in full
Specs are the manufacturer's own and linked to the page they came from. Prices come from a live daily check; where we have no verified price we say so rather than print a stale one.
Jonathan Green Black Beauty Dense Shade Grass Seed
Jonathan Green · Seed (no power) · Our score 8.9/10
#ad No verified live price right now, so we show none rather than a stale one. How we're funded.
The only bag here that puts a number on the shade it will take -- up to 70% -- and asks for four hours of sun instead of six.
Published specs
| Species | Tall fescues, fine fescues, perennial ryegrass |
|---|---|
| Percentages | Not published |
| Shade tolerance | Up to 70% shade |
| Sunlight required | 4+ hours per day |
| Germination | 14-21 days |
| New lawn coverage | 300 sq ft per lb |
| Overseeding coverage | 600 sq ft per lb |
| Bag sizes | 1, 3, 7, 25 lb |
| Seeding windows | Mid-August to mid-October, or mid-March to mid-May |
Source: Black Beauty Dense Shade Grass Seed, jonathangreen.com
The 25 lb bag covers 7,500 sq ft of new lawn: 25 / 7.5 = 3.33 lb per 1,000 sq ft. Overseeding at 15,000 sq ft is 25 / 15 = 1.67 lb per 1,000. Only Black Beauty Sunny's bag table matches that figure; it is a third less than Black Beauty Ultra's 5 lb and well under half the Scotts mix's 7.5 lb. A shade bag going down thinner is deliberate: crowded seedlings compete for the little light there is.
What the numbers favor
- 70% shade tolerance published as a number, not a claim
- 4+ hours of sun, two hours less than the sun-tolerant bags ask for
- 3.33 lb per 1,000 sq ft for a new lawn -- a third less seed than Black Beauty Ultra asks for
- Fine fescues in the blend are the most shade-tolerant cool-season grasses
- Four bag sizes from a 300 sq ft patch to 7,500 sq ft
What they don't
- 14-21 days to germinate, twice the wait of a ryegrass-heavy sun mix
- No published species percentages
- Jonathan Green publishes no root depth or soil-type guidance on this product page
- Cool-season blend, so it will not persist in the warm-season south
the area gets less than four hours of sun. Below that no seed fixes it -- mulch the bed or plant something that is not grass.
How it scores
Scores are our editorial weighting of the published specs above, not a test result. They are deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
Scotts Turf Builder Grass Seed Sun & Shade Mix
Scotts · Seed (no power) · Our score 8.3/10
#ad No verified live price right now, so we show none rather than a stale one. How we're funded.
Five named species and a 4-0-0 analysis on the bag, at the price of needing half again as much seed per square foot.
Published specs
| Species | Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, creeping red fescue, chewings fescue, hard fescue |
|---|---|
| New lawn coverage | 745 sq ft per 5.6 lb bag |
| Overseeding coverage | 2,240 sq ft per 5.6 lb bag |
| Bag sizes | 2.4, 5.6, 16, 32 lb |
| Germination | First sprouts in about 6-12 days |
| Seed treatment | Fungicide-treated seed |
| Seeding temperature | 60F to 80F air temperature |
| Analysis | 4-0-0 |
Source: Scotts Turf Builder Grass Seed Sun & Shade Mix, scotts.com
5.6 lb over 745 sq ft is 5.6 / 0.745 = 7.5 lb per 1,000 sq ft for a new lawn. The same bag over 2,240 sq ft of overseeding is 5.6 / 2.24 = 2.5 lb per 1,000 sq ft. So the two mixes agree exactly on overseeding rate and differ by 50% on new lawns -- Scotts asks for 7.5 lb where Jonathan Green asks for 5.
What the numbers favor
- Five species named on the bag, more disclosure than most
- Publishes an NPK analysis, which a plain seed bag usually does not
- Fungicide-treated seed against damping-off in a wet spring
- Seeding temperature window published in plain degrees
What they don't
- 7.5 lb per 1,000 sq ft on a new lawn is 50% more seed than the alternative here
- No published percentage split between the five species
- Fine fescues in the blend are the least wear-tolerant grasses in a cool-season lawn
you are seeding a high-traffic play lawn. The fescue-heavy blend is chosen for shade tolerance, not for foot traffic.
How it scores
Scores are our editorial weighting of the published specs above, not a test result. They are deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed
Jonathan Green · Seed (no power) · Our score 8.6/10
#ad No verified live price right now, so we show none rather than a stale one. How we're funded.
Half the seed per thousand square feet of the mass-market bag, on a tall fescue base that publishes its species list.
Published specs
| Species | Tall fescues, Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass |
|---|---|
| Percentages | Not published |
| New lawn coverage | 200 sq ft per lb |
| Overseeding coverage | 400 sq ft per lb |
| Bag sizes | 1, 3, 7, 25, 50 lb |
| Germination | 7-14 days |
| Sunlight | 6+ hours per day |
| Shade tolerance | Rated excellent by the maker |
Source: Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed, jonathangreen.com
The 25 lb bag is rated for 5,000 sq ft of new lawn and 10,000 sq ft of overseeding. 25 / 5 = 5 lb per 1,000 sq ft new, and 25 / 10 = 2.5 lb per 1,000 sq ft over an existing lawn. Every bag size in the range works out to the same two rates, which is a sign the coverage table was calculated rather than guessed.
What the numbers favor
- Species list published, even without percentages
- 5 lb per 1,000 sq ft for a new lawn is a third less seed than the Scotts mix asks for
- Germination window published as 7-14 days
- Range runs from a 1 lb patch bag to a 50 lb reseed
What they don't
- No published cultivar names or blend percentages
- Needs 6+ hours of sun despite the shade rating
- Tall fescue base has a coarser leaf than a bluegrass lawn
you are patching a warm-season lawn. This is a cool-season mix and will not persist in bermudagrass country.
How it scores
Scores are our editorial weighting of the published specs above, not a test result. They are deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.
Where to buy the tools on this page
Every link below is an Amazon affiliate link. We show no price we have not verified today, so where there is no live figure the link says "check price" and takes you to the listing to read it there.
Best shade tolerance
Jonathan Green Black Beauty Dense Shade Grass Seed
Jonathan Green · Seed (no power)
Best species disclosure
Scotts Turf Builder Grass Seed Sun & Shade Mix
Scotts · Seed (no power)
Best coverage per pound
Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed
Jonathan Green · Seed (no power)
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Common questions
What is the best grass seed for shade?
How much sun does grass seed need?
What grass grows best in deep shade?
How long does shade grass seed take to germinate?
How much shade seed do you need per 1,000 sq ft?
Sources
Read next
- Lawn Care
Cutting the grass is a third of the job. This is the other two thirds.
- Best grass seed
Coverage claims converted to pounds per 1,000 sq ft, checked against Extension seeding rates.
- Best grass seed for full sun
Sunlight hours, germination speed, soil temperature and seeding rates for three open-lawn mixes.
- Moss and shady lawns
Mow an inch higher, water deeply, switch to fine fescues, and know when to plant something else.
- How to overseed a lawn
Published extension seeding rates, the late-summer window, and the passes-per-lawn arithmetic.
- Cool-season grass types, and how to tell which you have
Published mowing heights, nitrogen rates and tolerances for each cool-season species.