Landscaping on James Island.

Salt spray. Close enough to open water and you get salt carried inland on the wind. It burns the leaf tips of grass that cannot handle it, and it accumulates in sandy soil. Centipede, which is the default grass across most of the Lowcountry, is not particularly salt tolerant. It is a common and expensive mistake here.

St. Augustine is the answer often enough that people call it Charleston grass. It handles salt better than anything else commonly laid here, and it is the most shade tolerant of the warm-season grasses, which matters under a James Island oak. The trade is that it drinks more water and chinch bugs love it, so it is a grass that wants attention rather than a grass you forget about.

The oaks. Older James Island streets have canopy that has been there a century. Beautiful, and brutal on turf. Under mature live oak you are fighting for light and losing to roots for water at the same time. Sometimes the honest answer is that grass is the wrong ground cover for that corner and mulch or a shade bed will look better and cost less to keep.

Drainage. Low ground near the marsh holds water after a hard rain and after a high tide. We grade for it, and where grading will not solve it we will say so instead of laying sod that drowns in October.