Artificial turf in St. Augustine Shores, FL, for a practice green behind the fence.

Choose the shots that fit the yard.

Start with the putt lengths and room to stand, then discuss cups, contours and fringe. Leave walking access and the surrounding garden in use. A course-side setting does not mean the turf should extend toward the cart path or beyond the property boundary.

Use the right decision-maker and landscape plan.

A condominium’s outdoor space may be common property, so confirm who controls it before requesting an installation scope. For a house, obtain the applicable association requirements and identify any tree certification needed for work inside a canopy.

Bring pond, shoreline and drainage information where relevant. The required water separation and maintenance access need to be identified before choosing the usable green or lawn area. Turf should not be treated as a way to fill a low drainage strip.

A par-70 course inside the neighborhood, and room for a green behind the house.

St. Augustine Shores Golf Club sits inside the community: 18 holes, par 70, 5,956 yards, open to the public, with water in play on nine holes (St. Augustine Experiences). It's laid out to be forgiving, the kind of course people here play often.

A backyard green gives you the part of the game you can work on every day: break to read, a fringe around the edge and the cups placed where you choose, laid out for your yard and approved by you before we start. On a golf-frontage lot, plan the course side of the yard for cart-path traffic and the odd stray ball.

If your lot backs onto the fairway, the association has already settled what can stand along that boundary. Fences on golf course, lake front and Intracoastal lots stop at five feet and must not interfere with the rear or side sight line; open fencing is allowed, opaque slats inside chain link are expressly prohibited, and hedges or other landscaping along those rear and side lines are held to five feet as well (ACC Manual, January 2025). So the green goes in behind something low and open, and the cups sit off the line the stray balls come in on.

Check the Shores requirements before county submissions.

Your plan goes to the St. Augustine Shores Service Corporation’s Architectural Control Committee, and work waits until the committee tells you it’s approved. Its application, revised in December 2025, lists a landscape project as its own kind of improvement and asks for a property survey showing the size and position of the work, with plans or pictures of the layout and finish. Any drawing or survey bound for the St. Johns County Building Department goes to the committee as well. The committee meets on the second Monday of the month at the Riverview Club, paperwork is due by 3:00 PM on the first Monday, and you or your contractor should attend. It can withhold approval over the grading plan, and it doesn’t check plans against county rules, so any county permit is a separate step (ACC application, December 2025).

In February 2026 the association’s documents page still listed the January 2025 ACC Manual next to that application (documents page, February 2026), and that manual gives the committee 30 days to approve or reject (ACC Manual, January 2025). The association’s website now opens a residents’ portal with no public documents, so ask the Shores office at 790 Christina Drive (contact page) for the manual and form in force before you apply.

Which restrictions apply to you depends on your Unit. The Shores is eight Units, each with its own recorded deed restrictions and its own setbacks, and your address on the county Property Appraiser's record shows which Unit you are in (the association’s summary of them). One line in those restrictions lands on a turf base directly: no changes in elevation which will interfere with drainage. In Unit 6, a recorded conservation and preservation easement runs along the rear property line of certain lots, and no fill may be placed or removed inside it at all.

Florida law limits association restrictions on items, including artificial turf, that are not visible from the parcel’s frontage, an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course, unless general law or local ordinance prohibits them (Fla. Stat. 720.3045). A fence alone does not establish that the turf is out of view from all of those places. Check the actual sightlines, including neighboring properties and the fairway, before relying on that protection. Our guide covers what an HOA can and can’t stop.

St. Augustine South, the unincorporated pocket between here and the city, is a different place with none of this: searches turn up no property owners' association and no recorded deed restrictions under its name. None of the above is yours if that's your address — not the Shores' Architectural Control Committee, not its Units and their setbacks, not the city's own review either, since St. Augustine South sits outside the city line. What does reach you is St. Johns County's code and the same two state statutes on this page. Water is the one open question: the county lists the City of St. Augustine, St. Johns County and JEA as the three providers serving the area but doesn't map which lots each one covers, so call the county at 904-209-2700 to find out which is yours before assuming a watering schedule (St. Johns County service providers). The city's own irrigation page doesn't say which parcels it governs either (City of St. Augustine irrigation schedule), so get that answer from whichever office actually bills you.

The developer kept the trees, and the grass has struggled ever since.

St. Augustine Shores was platted in the late 1960s to keep the native live oaks and pines standing, and more than 50 miles of walking paths run under that canopy today (Visit St. Augustine).

It's why the community looks the way it does, and why St. Augustine grass here thins, goes weedy and never recovers under the shade. Turf needs no sunlight, and a shaded yard is the most comfortable place for it in a Florida summer (why shade matters).

The ground sits higher than much of the coast, at 26 feet (Wikipedia), on fine sandy soil with slopes under 2%, though the water table can rise to within a foot of the surface in wet spells (USDA). Your lot gets measured and its ground checked on the free visit, and the base is built to suit.