I’ve made a grass material that is just textures, no particles. I had a good look at a similar material in Vue, basically just a colour gradient driven by a noise texture, and HSL modified with another noise texture. Plus a simple bump which is also a noise texture.
Being able to colour pick a gradient by dragging across an image is a great help. I’m glad I discovered that you can do that in Blender. So my colour gradient is quite a bit more complex than the Vue one I was referencing. I do need to be careful with the lighting with this material though – it makes a huge difference to the final result.
I’ve cobbled together a scene using my grass material and my recent ground material. I need to do a bit of work on the scale of the latter. Plus a Golden Shower tree for good measure.