ColMuldrow, I think you have had a lot of suggestions here for things to do IN the beds and you were looking for things to OUTLINE the beds. No one has really addressed the virtue of your idea of outlining the beds, and I think the message in that is that outlining them may or may not be a good design decision. Could you maybe tell us what is driving your desire to outline them? That would assist in a design discussion... this being a landscape design forum. And in design, purpose often drives decision-making. For me there is some confusion, as I may have suggested in my post, between the image of what you have, and what you want to achieve. What you have is kind of hard to argue with, and because of its dominant nature, trying to put a different kind of landscaping underneath it would have a bit of a futile feel to it. And so, a tidily outlined bed would have a slightly surreal feeling to me in this setting. It is obviously your yard and your preferences will prevail, but given that you've chosen a landscape design forum rather than either a plant forum or a local nursery for advice, I'm afraid that does drive the kind of advice you'll get (unless the conversation turns to ivy...). That said, there are not many plants that will stay exactly where you want them to in the conditions you have here; at least, it may depend on the trees, but I don't think so. Plants travel in response to where they find moisture and light and nutrients. Areas under trees are notoriously short of these attributes, and you may find a carefully planted edge wandering from where you laid it. That is why I suggested a physical edge, which if nothing else would create moisture-retaining areas in the soil that would keep plants inclined to stay where you put them, and allow you to correct if they wander. Yardvaark, I thought we were all going to try to get along. The key to doing that is, I think, in your last remark where you characterize opposing advice as an attack. It is not, and regarding it as such will always lead where this thread has led. Opposing advice, even if it criticizes advice previously given, is just the way the cookie crumbles when you ask a room full of people who are not an organization or hierarchy of any kind for advice. You will not get a single answer, the answers may disagree, and as the asker, you simply have to sort that out and the people in the room have to come to terms with being disagreed with. You could have opposed my advice to use ferns on some basis, and I would not have regarded that as at attack on me, but rather as contextualizing the advice I gave the OP. I might have responded, or reiterated, but probably not if I thought your additional advice enhanced the OP's ability to evaluate the option. I don't regard it as an attack on me when someone denigrates my ingrained aversion to foundation planting; I simply see it as a good thing that the OP gets a variety of advice. If all else fails, we should all be addressing the OP, and not each other. Karin L

Container gardening, if the hour is late and you are fit to be tied for what to do, might be the best, cheapest, and most certainly quickest answer. DH and I moved into this house three years ago, and there really is no place suitable for a garden, except right up next to the house on the south and west sides, where the prior owners HAD rock, then barkmulched on top of it to cover the rock. Now, it's an ugly combination of rocks and bark, and since we both work full time and have three teenagers, time constraints didn't even allow for the "dig up and make it a real garden" option; besides, there are a few nice low shrubs that we didn't want to tear out. So, I did a little research and found the Earth Box. Did a little more research, and didn't begin to want to deal with their customer service, so continued to research. Found Garden Patch Grow Boxes, spoke with reps at customer service and felt pretty good about the company. Bought thirteen of them, and then found an Earth Box at a garage sale--great, this way I could compare. For the record, there is no comparison: the elasticized cover on the Earth Box (through which a gardener is supposed to make "X" hatches and plant starts), coupled with the butt-ugly black pipe sticking out, made the Grow Box a KO winner, especially when calculated in the GB came with the first year's supply of fertilizer. I have since discovered that their plastic covers will break down during the second year, so will be replacing all covers with some 4-mil plastic that I picked up in the Walmart hardware department, and using my own fertilizer, ala EB's original instructions, to make a "hybrid" growing box. Heat? Dry? Not a problem--the GB has a 4 1/2 gallon reservoir, and even on very hot days, if I water in the a.m. and check back in the p.m., they're never dry (and must NEVER be allowed to go dry). Weeds are not a problem, either; the bonus (that I didn't realize would be a bonus) is that we have terrible bindweed in our yard (okay, so that's not the bonus--wait for it!), and I didn't end up planting my garden into the ground right where the bindweed seems to be the worst. I never thought I would swear by container gardening, but I have grown carrots (in the same box with the tomatoes--who needs a separate stinking box!?!), peppers, radishes, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, watermelon, cantelope, and flowers in my boxes. HUGE BONUS for container gardening: when we get our first hard freeze, I can take those suckers in the garage, and we'll have fresh tomatoes from our own garden well into January. They may not be as flavorful as those sun-warmed and -ripened that we miss from last August, but they're better than those pink mushy things loosely marketed as "tomatoes" at the local grocer, and not just cuz they're free! Good luck with your garden, and let us know what you end up doing!!!

It's a good thing you realized before you implemented it, that a gravel mulch will not prevent weeds. If weeds have been allowed to establish, even if just for a while, momentum has it that they will continue because they are self perpetuating. It's possible to overcome them, but it requires dedicated diligence for the first year and moderate diligence for the second. (Meaning that they must be eradicated as soon as they appear, and never allowed to produce seed or propagate by root expansion. If it happens, it means the extermination cycle can last an additional two years.) If you install sod before getting rid of roots of perennial weeds, they will likely infest the new lawn. Weed seeds existing and arriving in the soil will probably try to infest it as well. The easiest and most effective ways to deal with weeds is with weed-killing and preventing chemicals, and heavy mulch. If you plan for turf, it depends on what kind of weeds are present to determine what will be effective to get rid of them first. If you plan for groundcover, it's probably easiest to kill weeds, mulch and leave the area unplanted for a couple of months so that worst of the recurring and sprouting weeds can be easily dispensed with. If you're diligent about preventing weeds during the first two years, it becomes easy to keep out the future occasional strays.

Flora, That looks great! I have behind my barn, 6000+ bricks. I was thinking of laying a border of them side by side (vs. end to end) for the lawn mower. However, one of the things that has prevented me from edging anything with anything but Round-Up, is that I have 3 acres of beds. As it is, right now the only chemical I use at all is Round-Up. I fight poison ivy, so I always have it. I simply sprayed the edges of my beds so I could mow on the dead edge. The mulch is mounded up abruptly, so there is a defined edge of the garden. The Round-Up creates kind of a no-man's land. Unfortunately, although it does a good job of keeping the weeds and grass from growing into the beds, it's not the prettiest at all. I love the idea of the edging + the bricks/stones. I might become a little OCD about this and try one of my smaller beds. That'll only be maybe 150' x 15 to 30' wide! Oh - and for anyone who is looking for bricks? Don't forget Freecycle. People have all this stuff stacked up behind their houses.... Christine