Thanks rhizo, it is as I'd feared then. Luckily there aren't any trees there. I'll have to give it some serious thought then, unfortunately I'd need to make up my mind sooner rather than later as there is a mountain of topsoil lying in front of my house which I was going to use to fill it in.

Kris.....my only comment on Bud's comment about having raised the bed around her peonies and having them bloom....well....I heard once that a flyer bailled out of a plane at 10,000 feet.....without a parachute..... and survived. There is no accounting for just plain dumb luck. The peony is a plant unto itself....it has this brain that tells it...."I'm planted too deep and I will not bloom"..... You put a peony at a particular depth....and it blooms. Then you topdress it....you bring soil around its base, effectively putting the plant deeper. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the plant resents what you've done and refuses to bloom...or blooms not as expected. So, once you have found your depth, leave it there. If you feel your plant is not blooming as you would like, and think its in the ground too deep....simply lift it. Dig around the plant's four sides, as deep as you can so that the entire plant is free of the soil holding it. Then choose the side you wish to lift and put a spade or shovel under...and lift. Backfill as you go. Lift it a half-inch...an inch...but try to not take it out of the ground. Just backfill and firm up....then water generously. Sometimes this will not in any way harm the position of the roots and may not cost any non-blooming time.

I've never done it, but if I wanted to I would put some sort of collar around the shrubs. 3 - 4 inches out, and then go ahead and add soil. That way, they won't rot at the base of the trunk. Suppose you could use some kind of PVC pipe that you could cut and then fit around the trunk. Have you ever seen those concrete tree collars? They come in half circles. That might work.

If you want to save the old grass, dig/lift it out with a flat bladed shovel (be sure to get about 1 inch of roots), set it aside, fill with sand or soil, then replace the sod. Sand is easier to use than soil because soil is ALWAYS cloddy. But if you are going to cover it with the sod anyway, it should work fine. I have an area like that in my yard. We are going to widen the walkway by 2 feet. For now we are going to lay mulch and put step stones on top of the mulch. This is a temporary solution and a trial to see if we want to go even wider with it.