The heat-resistant tropical lawn grasses such as
Zoysia matrella (syn.
Z. tenuifolia), bermuda grass (
Cynodon dactylon and its relatives such as
Cynodon 'Santa Ana'), and perhaps the finer-leaved cultivars of the coarse st augustine grass (
Stenotaphrum secundatum) do need less much water than our temperate lawn grasses, and stay green in hot conditions, but depending on how cold you are will be browned off in winter. Would that matter to you? If so, you could try the suggestion by Hugo Latymer (in his classic book
The Mediterranean Gardener) of over-sowing a rye grass in autumn, which would come up quickly with the autumn rains and stay green through the winter, dying back as the warmer-growing grasses took over the following spring.
When we visited the nursery of Olivier Filippi, at the MGS meeting in Uzés (South of France) a few years ago, he showed us interesting plots of waterwise small-leaved lawn alternatives such as
Achillea crithmifolia, the grey-leafed
Thymus mastichina (syn.
T. ciliatus), which does well for us unwatered in a hot garden in Greece, and
Frankenia laevis – all quite different in appearance from lawns, but much more truly Mediterranean-looking. His nursery is on the draft list of plant suppliers you can find by clicking
here.