Personally, I think vue textures aren't good for simulating vegetation on close up terrains. Therefore I use an "earth"-texture and covers it with grass. But there's limits for how much grass my machine can handle. I think I've reached the limit for what most computers can handle with this picture : http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=232587 My computer can handle a bit more but it could be a large problem if you need to make large fields. This month contest "Harvest" for example.. What to do? - Thomas

You could render some of the background grass separately as an alpha plane and place that plane in the appropriate part of the scene. That would lower the poly count and leave more memory free for foreground details. It wouldn't work well for grass that needs to show shadow or interact with other objects, but could be good for grass in the distance.

For "very important" plants in the foreground I either use scans of real leafs for texturing on alpha-planes or on 3d-models,created by plant-studio for example. That gives you the possibility to controll your polygons and delivers the right detailing you need.:-)

Place line or patches of grass at strategic position so the can hide "naked" areas, that is one way to keep the poly. down.