Hello Donna,

Thanks for the question.

All grass varieties need SOME sun to grow – even shade tolerant varieties. For dense shade grasses, they still require 2-4 hours of full sun or 5-6 hours of dappled shade each day. If your problem area gets less sun than that, you may want to consider opening up the tree canopy. If you do not want to get more light into the area, you will probably not have success with grass. Here are more considerations when growing grass in the shade: https://extension.umd.edu/resource/growing-grass-shade

As far as varieties are concerned, fine and tall fescues are the most shade tolerant grass varieties, but they still require 2-4 hours of direct sun a day. If you wish to attempt fescue overseeding, try to determine when your dense shade area experiences the most sun (early in the season before trees leaf out, mid summer when the sun is farthest north, etc.) and attempt to seed then. Some people that try to establish grass in dense shade are committed to overseeding multiple times per year (spring and fall), every year, to constantly replace the declining grass plants.

You mentioned installing drainage. Was the dirt overly disturbed? Is it possible lower quality soil was brought up and the good topsoil was buried? Depending on the type of equipment used I would also worry about soil compaction. The soil test will tell you about soil makeup and fertility, but will not give you much information concerning compaction.

When the landscape company reseeded last year, how deeply did they rototill? If the soil is highly compacted, it may require digging 6 to 9 inches deep to relieve the compaction.

The landscape company likely used a mix of grass varieties in the seed they used. The tall thick grass is probably a variety in the mixture that is tolerant of the shady conditions in your yard. If you do not like that grass, you may need to address compaction, kill off the grass with a non-selective herbicide and reseed with a good quality shade tolerant fescue variety.

Hope this helps.