Floratam vs. Seville St. Augustine: Which One Is Actually Right for Your Yard?

Walk into any big box store in Central Florida and you'll find Floratam St. Augustine stacked up on pallets near the entrance. It's everywhere, it's affordable, and it's the variety most homeowners default to simply because it's what's available and what they've heard of. But familiarity isn't the same as the right fit — and choosing the wrong grass variety for your yard can cost you a lot more than the price difference between the two.

At Strada Landscape, we've installed sod across Orlando and the surrounding area for over 20 years. When homeowners ask us which St. Augustine variety to go with, our answer isn't always Floratam. Here's an honest comparison of the two most common varieties we get asked about, and how to figure out which one actually belongs in your yard.

The Quick Takeaway

Floratam is the most widely sold St. Augustine variety in Florida — not because it's the best, but because it's mass-produced and inexpensive. It performs well under the right conditions, but it comes with real limitations that most contractors don't talk about upfront.

Seville is a premium variety with a finer texture, better shade tolerance, and a lower growth profile that gives your lawn a more polished, refined look. The right choice depends entirely on your yard's sun exposure and what you're looking for in a lawn.

What Is Floratam?

Floratam is the most widely produced and used St. Augustine grass in Florida — a coarse-textured cultivar released jointly in 1973 by the University of Florida and Texas A&M University. For decades it was considered the go-to option for Florida lawns, and it does have genuine strengths in the right conditions.

In full sun and ideal conditions, Floratam's performance is solid. It establishes quickly, creates dense coverage, and when healthy can outcompete weeds. If you've admired the sprawling green lawns across Florida neighborhoods, there's a good chance you were looking at Floratam.

But here's what often gets left out of that conversation.

Floratam's Real Weaknesses

Shade Intolerance

Floratam has poor shade tolerance relative to other St. Augustine varieties. It does not persist well in environments that receive less than 6 hours of sunlight daily. In Central Florida, where mature live oaks, pine trees, and privacy fences are everywhere, that's a significant limitation. If your yard has any areas that only get partial sun, Floratam will thin out and struggle in those spots.

Chinch Bug Vulnerability

When Floratam was first released, it had documented chinch bug resistance — but that resistance has largely been lost over time. Chinch bugs feed by extracting sap from grass blades and injecting a toxin that disrupts water movement, leaving the lawn looking dry and patchy even with sufficient watering. They're now a major pest of Floratam specifically.

Disease Susceptibility

Floratam is susceptible to chinch bugs, webworms, and fungal diseases including gray leaf spot — all requiring vigilant lawn care. Compared to premium varieties, it demands more attention to stay healthy.

Lethal Viral Necrosis — The Big One

That's not a hypothetical. It has happened to homeowners across Florida — a full sod investment gone, replaced, and gone again. The only solution is switching to a resistant variety entirely.

What Is Seville?

Seville is a premium dwarf St. Augustine variety with a noticeably different look and feel compared to Floratam. It thrives in both full sun and moderate shade while delivering a rich, dark green color and soft texture underfoot. With its finer textured grass profile and dwarf growth habit, it's the go-to variety for natural-looking, polished lawns across Central Florida.

It is the most shade-tolerant of all St. Augustine varieties, requiring only about 3 to 4 hours of sunshine each day — though it does just as well in full sun as long as it has proper irrigation. That's a meaningful difference from Floratam's 6-hour minimum.

Side-by-Side Comparison

So Which One Should You Choose?

If you have a wide-open, full-sun yard with no trees, no shade structures, and you're working with a tight budget — Floratam can perform well in that narrow set of conditions. It's not a bad grass. It's just a grass that's commonly sold to people whose yards aren't a good fit for it.

Seville costs more upfront. But if your Floratam lawn fails due to disease or shade stress and needs to be replaced, that "savings" disappears fast — and you may end up spending more than you would have with Seville from the start.

At Strada Landscape, we ask about your yard's sun exposure before we ever recommend a variety — because the wrong grass in the wrong conditions is a problem that shows up six months after we've left, and that's not the kind of work we do.

Strada Landscape, Inc. specializes in residential sod installation throughout Orlando and Central Florida, including Windermere, Winter Park, Dr. Phillips, and Lake Nona.