Good that you have an open mind about what to use. The Habiturf might work well for you. As you already know it is a mix of prairie grasses which look good when blended together and mowed. Common buffalo, blue grama, and curly mesquite (grass, not tree) would make a good mix when seeded heavily enough to make a statement. Common buffalo tends to revert to that look you see along side of the highway - thin turf. Blue grama is the work horse of the three. It can look very nice when mowed provided you have full sun, which you do. It will not do well near solid fences, trees, or shrubs.
I was just at Douglas King Seeds last Monday talking about alternative grasses for rural locations, and they never mentioned Habiturf. Maybe because I'm 200 miles south of you where it is considerably warmer in the summer. Blue grama apparently doesn't like persistent heat.
Whatever you do, do not follow the Lady Bird Johnson website's advice for soil prep for your lawn. They say to do the following...
Quote:
A well-textured, well-drained soil is essential for long-term lawn success. Normally, after construction, developers spread a couple of inches of imported soil over soil compacted by heavy construction machinery. A sustainable lawn needs deep roots, so rip, rotovate or disk your soil to at least 8 inches - the deeper the better. Then incorporate a ½ inch layer of living compost with a low nitrogen and low phosphorus content into the top 3 inches of your prepared soil. Ask your local plant nursery for recommendations. DO NOT use tree bark, wood shavings or mulch. Grass won't grow in this. The soil surface should be finished to a fine granular texture and free from large stones. Note: If you are on undisturbed, uncompacted native soils then till lightly and add ¼ inch compost into the top 1 inch or alternatively add a compost tea.
The first sentence is true but the way you get there is by not following the rest of the directions. "Normally," a contractor does NOT import any soil UNLESS there is a requirement to adjust for proper drainage. Importing soil has nothing to do with soil structure or compaction - only drainage. Normally, there is no compaction UNLESS they drove heavy equipment over the soil during rainy periods. The soil might be hard but hard is normal and can be fixed without ripping, rotovating, rototilling, or disking the soil. Certainly deeper is NOT better.
Then, contrary to extremely popular opinion, rototilling compost into the top three inches of soil is a waste of expensive compost and will leave you with the most unpleasant, bumpy, surface to walk/mow on. At worst, if your compost was not fully decomposed, it will require additional nitrogen to decompose and nothing will grow in it for a year or longer. Just avoid that issue by using compost only on the top surface of the soil. I would suggest no compost at all unless you suspect your soil of having been poisoned.
And lastly, to completely contradict everything they say, 99.99% of all soil is not compacted, including yours, so get that off your mind. Hard soil and compacted soil are two very different things. And regardless of your soil, do not till lightly and add 1/4 inch of compost. Again it is a waste of compost and the tilling will leave you with a bumpy surface. You will never catch a legitimate landscaper using a rototiller. That tool is for gardeners (who, in my opinion, are misusing it, too). It is definitely not for lawns.
What should you do instead? You should pay a landscaper to bring a tractor (not a Bobcat) with a box blade (also known as a landscaper's blade) to resurface your soil. That process will scrape the top inch of soil and incorporate the weeds into it. He will also adjust to perfect your drainage. He may need more soil or may need to remove soil. He'll try to work with what you have because hauling soil around is not very profitable. A good driver will be able to cover about 5 acres in a morning as long as there are no trees, concrete, or sprinklers to worry about. What takes the time is redoing someone's mess. This is a photo of what a tractor and box blade looks like and the results.
When the tractor leaves your soil is ready. Sow the seed and roll it down with a water filled roller. You have enough water in the roller when you can walk behind it and not leave your own foot prints. The roller will not compact your soil. Compaction is the technical term for when all the air has been driven out of the soil by mechanical action. The only way to drive all the air out of soil is to saturate the soil with water and then plunge a herd of livestock hooves into it. The soil around a cattle tank is often compacted but the soil 10 feet away is not. Only the water-saturated soil can be compacted. But note that if you have rain soaked soil and you drive your car over it over and over, you can compact your soil in that one spot.
What you may or may not have is hard soil. Soil gets hard when the population of beneficial fungi dies off from drought and basic neglect. You can reestablish the fungi by providing continual moisture to the soil for several weeks. The easiest way to do this is to spray it with soap as a wetting agent and allowing regular irrigation to soak in much deeper than normal. Spray the yard with 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet of generic baby shampoo, then irrigate a full inch of water. Water normally the next week and repeat the soap in 2 weeks. That should do it. Your soil will hold moisture longer and deeper providing the moisture the fungi need to reestablish themselves. I used to have a long process using a soaker hose but the soap works much easier and faster. Shampoos work well because they never have any antibacterial agents in them. Generic baby shampoo is good because they skimp on the fancy/harsh detergents. When this is working you will notice that right after you irrigate, the soil will become very soft to walk on. Then a few days later it will be come very hard but the grass will remain healthy looking for several more days or weeks (in the cool season).
After you roll the seed down, water it lightly for a few minutes, several times a day, for 3 weeks. When you think you have 80% of the grass seed germinated, then you can start backing off on the watering frequency and going up on the duration. The way you develop deep grass roots is by watering for a long time but not very often. Grass roots will dive deeper looking for moisture when they cannot get it at the surface. Eventually you should be watering one inch all at one time. With those grasses you can probably go most of the winter without watering but I would advise you to water monthly to take care of your soil microbes. In the summer you can likely go 2 weeks between watering to keep the grasses from going dormant. Try stretching it out longer between watering. One way to damage those prairie grasses is to over water them. Then you will see it thin out and weeds coming in.
Your bermuda in the front may have shade issues. If your back yard is full sun, then your front must have a house in the way. You might consider a bermuda look alike called Shadow Turf. It is a variety of zoysia that does very well even in deep shade. Also you should be watering this time of year about once a month increasing in frequency to weekly in July and August. If the drought persists you might have to go to a 5-day cycle to keep it going. Watering more frequently than that will give you a weedy lawn.
I know this is more than you asked for but the mistakes on that Lady Bird wildflower page were just too much to ignore. Very poor advice there on lawns.