Experience with bee turf as lawn alternative?

Hi all—with mega-drought and water usage reduction, I know I’m not alone in trying to figure out a good lawn alternative. I’ve really gone down the rabbit hole researching this one, and would love some others’ perspectives/experiences. Brief context: We bought our house a year ago and are currently in the stage of “tearing out everything that was originally planted to sell the house,” so we’re essentially starting with a blank slate. We have garden beds along the perimeter of our yard and plan to add lots of native and drought-tolerant plants, but we’d still really love to dedicate a moderate-sized part of our yard to a “lawn-like” play area for the kids. A traditional grass lawn is out for pretty clear water-consumption reasons, and we’re not interested in artificial turf. I’ve read up on lawn alternatives ranging from yarrow (who knew!) to clover (there are really some clover die-hards out there!) to Dymondia (not sure I like the look of a whole expanse of it) to a native fescue mix (doesn’t seem to hold up well to play and foot traffic), and so far my winner in theory is a bee turf mix—something like this seed blend from West Coast Seeds: https://www.westcoastseeds.com/products/bee-turf

The selling points of the bee turf, to me, seem to be:

-good for pollinators

-soft underfoot and holds up to play/traffic once established

-a blend hopefully means that the “lawn” will stay relatively green or visually interesting year-round instead of dying off or going dormant completely like a monoculture would

Anyone tried a bee turf mix like this? Any other thoughts or things I should consider? TIA!!!

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I don't have experience with bee turf personally, but I've also been researching grass alternatives! I haven't figured out a good solution for our yard yet. My fear about bee turf is that there could be too many bees and my toddler would get stung. Other than that, bees are great.

We don't have this exact turf, but we do have kurapia in our front yard. It seems very similar except that the kurapia is more vine-like. Yes, it grows well without a ton of water. It's pretty. And wow does it attract bees. Like A LOT of bees. That's fine with us because it is a ground cover and not a lawn substitute for us, but there is no way we could sit on it or walk on it barefoot. So, if you're looking to cover an area with something that's green, drought resistant, and good for bees, your turf mix looks like a good solution. If you want to use the area as you would a lawn, I would reconsider.

We installed the California Natives sod by Delta Bluegrass Company last year, and it has stood up well to traffic by our now-three year old and his friends. 

I've tried a few native options:

1) Larner Seed's "Lawn" mix of Yarrow and Poppy. That's nice for the Meadow-y part of the lawn, but can get fairly tall, so I don't really think of it as a steppable lawn.

2) Woodland strawberry (Fragraria Vesca) - A native strawberry, medium-height, actually does produce some teeny strawberries. Not that steppable either, but nice as a groundcover otherwise.

2) Lippia Repens (Phyla Nodifloria) - A native trailing groundcover that's quite low and highly steppables. I planted near a rock path and it trailed over it really nice, I'm now trying to get it over more of our yard. The flowers do attract bees, but I suspect the bees know to avoid a toddler. It does very well in the sun, not as well in the shade. You can pick some up at Oaktown native or Watershed nurseries, last I checked.

We're in El Cerrito if you want to stop by and see those options.

Have you looked into Kurapia?

We are also looking into lawn alternatives (though we just have dirt and weeds right now 😅) but so far, Kurapia looks to be our top choice. Kelsey Fair (landscape designer) has a YouTube video showing it in her yard. We were also considering creeping red fescue but it sounds like it's not as great for foot traffic like you said.

Kurapia is drought-tolerant, grows in sun and partial shade, and apparently does well and gets more dense in a good way when walked on. It flowers between May-Oct which attracts butterflies and bees but you can mow it to prevent flowering if you're worried about attracting bees while kids are playing (though mowing is not necessary). It does seem somewhat expensive but I think it's a great combo of low maintenance, apparently only needing 1x/month irrigation once established, as well as good underfoot for kids, dogs, etc. We are still finalizing our backyard design but I continually compare/consider whether other groundcovers or even artificial turf might be better but keep coming back to this.

Will be following to see what you end up with.

The answers you've already received are helpful - all great options. I wanted to add what we ended up doing, over the course of almost a decade: 

Almost our entire property is a pollinator / fruit orchard garden, both native and non, almost all low-water (but for the fruit trees, which do require water to get established, but provide needed shade, nectar, and fruit!). However, we ended up leaving a small portion of our property as traditional lawn (also from Delta), and I must say - people and animals really appreciate having that soft 150 ft2 carpet to rest on. On this lawn we picnic, play board games, read books, and some neighborhood toddlers come over to sit on it. A couple of times we even caught raccoons having a special midnight dalliance, following a picnic, gathered from the neighbor's trash. When our son was younger our lawn was bigger, for playing soccer and catch. Now that we don't do that at home we've replaced that strip with a pollinator garden. Our garden brings us joy - watching the bees, butterflies, birds, and even mammals every day is actually one of my accomplishments in life. (When we bought our house it was just English and poison ivy, plus weeds and degraded soil.) It has been and sometimes still is a ton of work, but now we are more in the enjoyment phase of the garden, and we've all learned a lot through creating a very alive garden. We ended up compromising on various people's gardening philosophies to create the hodgepodge of our own garden - it's not purely native, not purely low-water, not formal, yet not untended - and it works for a wide variety of wildlife. I have also spotted bees seeming to drink the water off the grass, which we have set to use the least amount of water but still be enjoyable; we adjust usage based on weather. We take shorter showers and have water-efficient appliances, so our overall water consumption is probably lower than most. I'm glad that so many people are bringing in pollinator plants in a variety of ways - home ecosystems are really important! Also, Annie's in Richmond has lawn-replacement plants as well.   

Hello! We just installed kurapia as lawn alternative, which we will use to do picnics and play fetch with our dog. The first months you do need to water it and afterwards it’s supposed to be quite drought resistant. We will wait and see, but it looks like a great option and allows you to have a green space with eh out the water needs. 
good luck!