There''s actually an article in the GPU Gems book which describes a method to create alot of artificial grass that looks good. I highly suggest reading it.

The basic idea is that instead of using a quad to display the grass you use a grass model. The one used in the code creatures benchmark is actually made up of 3 quads which intersect in the middle and are rotated about 45 degrees. This creates a star shape. The model is then textured with the grass texture, and the appropriate maps are created.

These grass primitives are then multiplied and placed extremely close to eachother (some even over lap). A vertex shader is later applied to the models to allow for "blowing in the wind". And a final touch is that a seperate layer of "flowers" is added above a specific area of the grass. The flowers are rotated at various angles to give the effect that they are growing up out of the grass but they are simply a layer on top of the grass.

This creates a very nice grass effect, the only time you can notice that this is not "real grass" is when you look at it from 90 degrees above.

Again if you want to do this I highly suggest reading the article. It''s very informative about the whole process.