Vegetation Optimization, Lodding

Lately I've kind of done a 180 on my scene, and have been working hard to get my vegetation to not half the framerate (and I've nearly succeeded!).

Here are some images of how I'm doing the lodding:

I wanted to make the grass thicker as you moved closer to it, so I added a second layer that only appears when close to the camera,

The shader is set up so as to fade out the vegetation as you move away from the object, until the culling distance kicks in.

Video demonstrating this: