All the grass, trees and bushes are masked mode. Only a few things are alpha, like the fake shadows (see latest screenies), but they stick on the ground, so there's is barely any z-fight. Also, those grass islands under a grass mesh, they are masked too and slightly elevated uniquely. To prevent z-fights, they are elevated depending on their x/y position (the fraction after the comma, divided by 20 or so).
So there's no z-sorting by me. I did Z-sort alpha in the past, by repositioning the meshes in the order of distance to the camera, which works, but as resolutions increase and I learn more about good masking, it seems kind of unnecessary.
I had the intel DSS export plugin for photoshop years ago, that allowed to make masked textures that fould fade in as smooth as alpha ones. Now I use paint dot net, still good dss export options, but not as good as the ones o the other one.
Anyway, in case you didn't know, this is the most important thing when working with masked textures, dds, png or tga: duplicate the actual layer, then blur the one below, gaussian 4 or so, then set it's alpha to about 3%. This will help DX to fade the outline to the correct color (otherwise to black)