Keeping the dogs out of the garden beds is not a particularly good reason to end up with raised beds! We have two dogs and frequently dog-sit for friends and family. There are sometimes 4 dogs here. We have a large garden and the dogs' needs were considered in laying out the garden. The dogs have never damaged the plantings. One of the primary needs of dogs is to patrol the perimeter of their territory - that usually means they like to run the fencelines! The simple solution is to make a path along the fence and put the garden beds to the inside. As long as there is easy access (e.g. intersecting path or paths) to the fence path, the dogs will usually 'take the path of least resistance' to get to the fence path. Dogs also like to survey their territory from higher ground - so a raised bed might actually become their preferred spot to park themselves to monitor activity in their territory! Watch your dogs to see what routes they usually travel around the property and use that information to help plan the garden layout. Traffic patterns shown on a rough sketch of our backyard garden - note the paths along/near the fences: Visiting dog surveying territory from higer ground:

The dead foliage in the photo appears to be daylily (hemerocallis) and not true lilies. Is this correct? I think it would be a good idea to preserve this type of treatment but consider the following; select medium height daylilies like Stella D'oro or preferably Happy Returns (nicer colour, I think). Both are repeat bloomers but need to be dead-headed after the first bloom to keep them tidy looking for the remainder of the season. Dig out (but shake off the soil) all grass, weeds and existing daylilies and discard or save to a width of 2 feet (this width is the same as the height of the plants when in bloom, a good ratio to use for all beds). Use stone edging to separate the lawn from the bed. This will make it easy to cut with a mower and will help prevent the grass from creeping back into the bed. Mix plenty of organic material into the bed and then plant your daylilies about 18 inches to 2 feet apart. Water well and then mulch with bark. On the other side of the path I would again plant daylilies but not exclusively. Mix in peonies if there's enough sun or hostas if there's enough shade. Again, astilbes if there's enough sun or ferns if it's shady. Use the same procedure regarding preparing the bed and mulching.

this is new jersey, as in northeast coast US near new York. I'm doing work at someone's house. Their goal initially was to just have a no-mow no water or fertilizer lawn. Then I or they pointed out how some of these no mow/water/fertilizer covers can be flowering type things instead of just grass and they liked that idea better. So we set out to find something like that online in seeds or plugs but I didn't really find anything at first. I just recently found a lot of those things are on ebay cheap seeds and should be started indoors over winter and planted in spring instead of planted now in Fall like grass seeds. At first, we kind of scrapped the idea of a flowering cover because they wanted to do the whole lawn with it but don't want it to spread to the neighbors' lawn especially underground and popping up. So we decided to just do a no-mow type lawn like Pearls Premium http://www.pearlspremium.com/ But considering the cost of the no-mow lawn seeds and not using chemical starter fertilizer or crabgrass preventers, it's a gamble to try and plant and hope it doesn't just turn to crabgrass. I have organic fertilizer but it's no where near high in phosphorus to develop good roots quickly like regular starter fertilizer, Organic starter fertilizer I can only find online believe it or not. Instead of doing the whole yard with something like Pearls Premium, It would probably cost them less for me to just till large landscape beds throughout the property and then get seeds off ebay of things like flowering ground cover (that doesn't spread underground like crazy) and things like creeping juniper etc. I'm open for suggestions on thing like this. Once these things are established, they need zero water and zero mowing and maybe a sprinkle of organic fertilizer every few years. They will need a pruning every few years but that's like an hour of work maybe. At the beginning, yes the newly planted landscape beds will have to be de-weeded well until the plants establish and thicken it up. We're leaving about a 8 foot border space from the property line that will just remain how it is now which is basically weeds with some turf grass mixed in. A no-mow lawn still needs to be cut maybe 3 times a year, so these 10' borders will have to be mowed anyway if they're left how they are or if regular grass or no-mow grass is planted there. Once the landscape beds are thriving, they can decide to plant regular or no-mow grass in the border areas. I can do that now since it's the right time instead of waiting until next Fall but we want to see how the landscape beds go first. I can probably just scalp mow the weedy border areas and that will really retard growth there so that omits the whole having to plant grass there but the yard will still look nice because of the landscape beds. Get the idea now? It's about making a nice yard with minimal mowing, watering, fertilizing, and the cost is very low thanks to ebay seeds. perennial ground cover flowering: http://www.pbcgov.com/newsroom/1211/_images/ground_covers_tibouchina.jpg http://img.diynetwork.com/DIY/2014/03/07/CI-Stepables_Groundcover-wooly-thyme_h_lg.jpg creeping juniper: http://s45.photobucket.com/user/mishmosh2000/media/misc/Oot_Picture-7.jpg.html etc

The theory I read is that the molasses causes a blast of bio activity that rots the nut. But I've never gone digging to test. The nut sedge has not returned or multiplied so it's very promising. I know it's important not to break the sedge from the nut, but the molasses does seem to rot. I came up with the method because people were diluting the molasses and spraying the lawn. They said it didn't work, but of course it wouldn't. Diluted molasses is just like fertilizing. When I read the theory of the high bio activity rotting the nut, I realized that cutting the sedge down and applying pure molasses with no dilution would fit the principle better. I stick to liquid kelp as well. I mix it with fish emulsion. I overhead water my shrubs and flowers with it and do put it on my lawn as well. What's your process for administering? I've just walked around with watering cans but am considering an EZ Flo system. I can imagine the beautiful results from fresh seaweed. Two of my lantanas were ravaged by hurricane Matthew. The leaves just withered and turned crispy brown. I've been pouring kelp and liquid compost and some new green growth has emerged. Unfortunately, it's so close to winter it won't harden in time. I'll replace them next spring but it's been an interesting experiment to see how organics bring them back. What's your full organic program?