This question was answered by Charles, Durham County Extension Master Gardener volunteer

Thank you for your question.

Unfortunately, high traffic, e.g., kids and/or pets playing, doesn’t go well with low maintenance grass or other ground covers, especially in shady locations. The most wear-resistant, drought-tolerant grass for this region is one of the Bermuda grass cultivars. However, they will obviously require some labor -soil modification, planting, watering and mowing- in order to do well. They are also not very shade-tolerant, and grow poorly in shady or wet areas, plus they can be a little “picky” about mowing. Bermuda cultivars turn brown after the first frost, and remain dormant until the next late spring. The cool season grasses, e.g., Fescue cultivars and others, will tolerate some shade, though not much, and stay green through the winter. Again, though, they require significant labor to establish and maintain, and are not too good at standing up to regular heavy traffic.

Other ground covers, e.g., vinca, phlox and others will often tolerate shade better than grasses. Once established they spread on their own (and may need some disciplining to keep them where you want them) and are generally low maintenance. However, they won’t stand up to traffic. 

 If by “chemicals” you mean inorganic (man-made), there are plenty of organic (“natural”) soil amendments, fertilizers, and other lawn care products available now. Strictly speaking organic products are “chemicals” (compounds of naturally occurring elements), just as inorganic ones. The bad reputation that inorganic products have is largely due to overuse, and/or use in the wrong situation. Testing the soil will give you recommendations for what nutrients are needed for growing various plants, and usually recommend a fertilizer that will contain that nutrient balance. All NC counties have a county agricultural agent, and test materials and instructions can be found there. The state agricultural lab analyzes these samples for free between late April – late November. Here are some contacts for you: Davidson County Extension office https://davidson.ces.ncsu.edu/ Sam Boring Extension Agent, Agriculture – Horticulture Davidson County Center <personal data hidden>

PHONE:<personal data hidden> 

Another very useful source is a publication called Carolina Lawns, which is available to download from https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/carolina-lawns lFinally, you could let the lawn go back naturally to what it was before construction. This may not be a pretty lawn, but it should be suited to the conditions you have, plus it would require much less in the way of maintenance over the years.

I hope this has been helpful.

Charles Murphy

NCSU EMGV Durham County

NC Cooperative Extension

Durham County Center

Master Gardener Office

721 Foster Street

Durham, NC 27701

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Thank you for taking the time to reply Charles. I was trying for relative brevity in my original post and may have oversimplified; I have no problem with chemicals in general. I do know that everything is made of chemicals and that most things in moderation are fine :-) My concern is definitely more about the impact to the local ecosystem as the specific “chemicals” I meant were things like Round Up and those types of products that tend to be overused with such high regularity in monoculture non-native lawns. 
   We did leave as much of our acre as possible wooded and will allow the natural flora to return to most of our property but there was a lot of poison ivy on the land previously. I know nature hates a vacuum so we will need some kind of groundcover to keep that from taking back over. And I really would like to provide a lawn of some type as a play space for my kids, so I will look into the resources you’ve given me and see what else I can find before we make any permanent decisions. Thanks again for all your help! I wasn’t necessarily expecting an easy answer, but I figured I’d better ask before I assumed that there wasn’t one. 

Glad to be of help.  Let us know if you have any more questions.