I found the Mexican Grey River rocks at Homer at almost $15 a bag my guess 40lb. I used my concrete calcultor at 2" high and came up 0.25 cubic yards for you. That way you will have a good coverage.

Fairy- The name of the flowers are creeping phlox and they are perennials. We bought them 2 years ago and they are sure growing!! I have to keep cutting them back. After they bloom (until mid-May) they are green and stay green (green/brown in the winter). It's a nice border plant. We had the river rock fountain in the front yard but it was too small so we moved it to the back and bought a taller one of the same type for the front. With the new one, DH buried the black "tub" and put a grate on top and black river rock so it looks like the water is going into the ground - really cool. I will take a picture of the one in the front but it is raining (hard) today. We bought both fountains from a place in Fairfax called Merrifield Gardens. They have a bunch of different sizes. Here are some pictures of the transition. We like to sit out on the patio and we wanted a fountain so we bought this little one with the ball on top. Well, you can see what happened - it was overtaken by the plants. The first pic is of the purple sage that over took it and then the daisies were next - they come later in the summer. We'll see how it goes this summer now that the bigger fountain is in there and I have pulled up a lot of those daisies.

Okay first, you'll need to pull back those stones. If you don't have a 'hard rake' yet, invest in a good one. If you have one, and it's cheap, work with it until it breaks. If you need one, you will forever appreciate a good tool - get the best one you can afford. For a hard rake, you'll want one with 2 connecting points on the edges of the head (bow rake.) The type where the handle makes a single connection with the rake head is not designed for heavy materials, nor as good for long-term landscaping tasks such as moving stones or leveling beds (the back of a bow rake is perfect for moving a lot of dirt and putting a nice finishing touch on the project.) Get one that is size-appropriate for your height. These choices are what will take much of the drudgery and frustration out of already difficult jobs. Next, since it will be an ongoing project, break it down into stages. I do suggest that when it comes time to buy the plants, you buy all of the same varieties of plants at the same time. They can be like kitchen tiles. If you don't get the same exact shrub, at the same time, colors of both foliage and flowers may not match. Do all of one type at one stage, then later get all the next type, etc... If you have a decent size back yard, and can afford it, buy at least one extra of each shrub and plant it in an out of the way place, or in a spot where it can be moved later. It's not uncommon for a shrub to die, and a small investment ahead of time can save you headaches later if you need to fill something in. If you have so many plantings that this is financially a problem, skip it. Start with the rocks. Get a good size tarp, a wheelbarrow, and a round shovel. Start with pulling back the stones in the areas that will get the same plantings. Place the tarp on an out-of-the-way corner of the lawn and start dumping stones on half the tarp. Use the other half to fold back over to keep them clean and to keep the neighbors happy. This will kill the grass, so if you have extra driveway space, just dump them on the driveway and cover with the tarp. Keep removing more stones as you gather OM (see next paragraph.) Next step is to decide if you are going to buy the soil amendments, or build the soil yourself. Since you expressed a desire to build your own (the vastly cheaper route) begin piling on any organic matter you can. Either start a compost pile, or just start tossing on what OM you can gather on the now stone-free areas of the beds... or both. Some very cheap examples of OM resources are coffee houses (free,) wood chips from the companies that trim trees from power lines (free, or a small tip that makes them both happy to dump it where you need it, and happy to return with more,) kitchen scraps, grass clippings (learn how to compost these properly... a great source of organic matter, but a pain if not used correctly,) city leaf collections (even out of season, some cities use the same place each year and uncollected leaves piled up become what is called leaf mold... great stuff for lightening clay!,) and county dumps (many dumps in Tn. are now separating out all tree products and shredding them. They either give it away free, or sell it at reasonable prices to county residents.) There are many other sources for organic matter, just keep your eyes open and you might be surprised at what becomes available. Let it pile up high, and keep it pulled back a little (or really, just don't let it pile up too high) against any plant you want to keep. As it begins to break down (kept relatively moist, organic matter breaks down fast in Tn. My 8' of long grass and hay mulch on my garden beds broke down to an inch over the summer and was incorporated into the soil by the worms) add more and/or turn it into the soil (next paragraph.) Next you'll want to buy or borrow a 'garden fork'. You can use a shovel, but a good fork works better. At least once a year, and as often as every 1 - 3 months, turn the organic matter into the soil. If roots are in the way, you can keep it on top, or pull out the plantings that you don't want, and just mulch around what you want to keep. The worms will incorporate the organic matter into the clay around established plants, but it's a much slower process. If you did a good job at scrounging OM, you will be ready in a year or 2 for your new plantings. Of course, the longer you wait, the better, but strike a balance. When you dig clay, and turn in OM, the expansion of the volume can be surprising. Clay packs very tightly, once you begin to loosen it, you may quickly find you'll need to pull some out. This will depend on your desired level of the bed. When it comes time to remove the old plants, think about reusing them somewhere else, or use them as trade to get people to help. Lastly, decide what you do want as mulch. Organic mulches will continue to improve the soil and have many benefits. The downside is continual replenishment. Stones are fine, and when used with a weed barrier of some sort, look good and clean. The downsides are weeds that poke through when no weed barrier is used, the soil stays in a 'stasis', well-intentioned landscapers trying to weed eat around, or on top of stones inevitably break a window, and stones don't always stay in place... matching them, and replacing them ain't cheap. Anyway, that should get you started, and if you piddle around a little here and there, you'll be surprised at how fast removing the stones goes. BTW... a bbq gets family and friends more in the mood to help, and if you tackle the entire project in stages, the work for each step is nothing.

Hi Beth, I'm getting ready (trying to!) to leave on a trip pretty soon, and also getting ready for the spring swap right now, so I don't have much time to post, but this real quick! When I moved into this house everything that wasn't "grass" was covered with landscape fabric and a "decorative" rock called butter rock! I don't think it had been in for more than a couple years, possibly three, but I'm sure no more than that. In the back yard--where I do 99% of my gardening, there were 3 or 4 struggling perennials in the mass of rock. I've gardened for about 70 years as of right now--gardened "for real" for about 65!--so before I even signed the contract to buy the place I knew the ROCK had to go! And I didn't know the half of it till I started to take it all out. Rock is obviously incredibly heavy--and absolutely impossible to "shovel" once it "settled in." (River rock might be slightly easier, being "rounded.") I dug it out little by little with a hand trowel, putting it in larger black pots, and then putting it, little by little each week, in the dumpster--to keep it from getting too heavy! And I started "piling it up" on one end of the bed 'cause "disposing of it" was taking WAY too long since I wanted to start planting things. But the REAL problem started when I got down to the landscape fabric! As I started to pull the stuff out--a FAR more difficult job than I expected it to be!--I found some of the worst horribly compacted and DEAD soil I have ever seen! Parts of it were badly "discolored" with what I assume was some sort of a fungus/mold, and there were NO earthworms in it--at all! Worms are a sign of healthy soil! The "soil" was mostly heavy clay and that didn't surprise me because they clearly had filled in the area with "whatever was available" when they put it in! And in addition to all of that--I DID find "life" under the stuff! There were HUGE cities of ants that had set up housekeeping under the landscape fabric! Over the last 10 years I've gotten rid of most of them, but there are still a few places where I fight with them every year. By now you can really tell how much I love landscape fabric and ROCK! Eventually I posted FREE rock on FreeCycle and got somebody to come and take the (large!) "pile" I wound up with in the one corner. It was about four years before I finally got the entire bed across the back of my lot free of rock and fabric! As I cleared it out I started planting the cleared areas, so I didn't wait that long to "have a garden!" No way I could afford to "replace" the soil so I started out using cheap bagged "compost." It didn't do much, but maybe helped a little bit. I was surprised to find that some of the perennials did better in the clay than I ever thought they could--but I still don't recommend planting in heavy clay--if you have a choice! The very first year I started a compost pile and now have really Good Stuff to mix in as I'm planting and replanting--and over the years the soil is finally starting to improve enough to be "usable"--and with the introduction of homemade compost the worms are moving back in and increase every year. Another problem with having all the rocks in there is that they eventually get mixed into the soil––even where there's landscape fabric, and it's extremely difficult to "dig" in soil that has rocks in it. Every time you "hit" a rock you have to "move the shovel around" to get "past" it before you can dig in any deeper--so rocks seem to cause all kinds of "problems!" So! If you decide to keep the rock, I guess my best recommendation would be to clear out--as in, remove the rock and fabric--a "fairly large" area in a few places where you want to put perennials or bushes and just plan to not have a "wall to wall" flower bed. For the sunny areas you could put some pretty basic perennials in like Shasta daisies, Black-eyed-Susans, German Iris, Daylilies, or a few other "easy to grow" things. After a few years they'd spread to fill in the entire area where you removed the rock/fabric, so you'd have "color" out there and it wouldn't all just look like "rock!" Think about what you want to do! You have plenty of time to plan it and work on it! You might want to try clearing out one fairly large spot somewhere and plant a few things to "see how it goes" with the dog. Possibly, depending on the dog, you could use some of the "short" garden edging type fence to keep her/him out. Just consider the different possibilities. I use "small bark mulch" but there's also a kind of "shredded" wood mulch you can buy, and I kind of doubt that a dog would want to chew on that stuff too much, so you might try different kinds of things to see if you can find something that works better than rock for you. [But! In the last several years "somebody" has decided that cubing up old tires and calling it MULCH is a good idea! Please, please-please-please don't put any "old tire mulch" in your yard! Decaying/deteriorating rubber would be an even worse thing to have in your soil than rocks--or you could just name your garden the Decaying Petroleum Garden! Ahh! What a fine scent! ;-D] Think about it and take your time in planning and maybe trying some different ideas in some areas. You'll eventually get to what you really want and like! I probably won't be back for a while with any "long" answers--just not gonna have enough time for the next month or so, but there are lots of other folks around here to give you ideas! Skybird EDITED TO ADD: When you start a thread I don't believe you can edit the "topic" at all once it's posted, and I'm pretty sure you can only edit the text of the first post for something like an hour and after that it's "set in stone"--so to speak!!! Replies to the original post can be edited for a month or something like that!