We have both cats and a dog. Love the beasties but....!!! What we do is keep all the cut canes from the roses and put them down where the animals take a nap. We would never hurt our four-legged friends but the dog at first didn't seem to get it so we let her sniff a rose cane and then gently tapped her on the nose with it (not to penetrate) so she gives a little yelp and gets the message. After that she avoided anywhere with rose canes. The rose canes also work great for keeping squirrels from digging out plants and bulbs. One neighbor has nice tulips, lilies etc. on his front lawn near the sidewalk and lost a few to 'pickers'. He takes a couple inch piece of rose cane and tapes it to the base of the plant stem. That way anyone wanting a smell ,etc. won't get pricked but if they reach down low to pick the flower off from the base theen 'OUCH'. He doesn't want to stick little tykes who might innocently pick a flower but he says the little ones tend to pick off the blossom from the top and leave the stem.

Agreed, paper layer unnecessary. As long as you pull little weeds when you first see them, you shouldn't have weeds in such copious amounts that you need to smother them. I'm sure the prior corn farming operation had very few weeds going to seed in the field. They spray as much and as many chemicals as necessary to make sure of that. So you're starting with as clean of a slate as possible. Birds & wind will bring weed seeds, but it's a lot easier to spend a minute here, a minute there, then wait until it's "time to do some weeding." The leaf mulch will do a lot for preventing weeds from being able to start growing at all. I find it a lot easier to push aside where you want to plant than to try to not cover plants with leaf/mulch. Some prefer the opposite though. Consider what you would prefer before you start. If you're going to do a bark mulch, I would do it on top of the leaves. It will keep them from blowing or washing away, and that's what the worms and microbes are going to eat first anyway.

I gave my husband the trenching job. We gave up on the black rubber edging. Bricks IÂd like but until I start doing it myself, it wonÂt happen. Our main bed is a big raised one with landscape blocks, I think I burned him out on that one 4 years ago. (We didnÂt install the blocks ourselves but did everything else including move and replant all the perennials.) We have been doing the trenched edge for all the other beds. The one problem I have with that is that it seems to get wider each year. I never seem to be there when heÂs doing it, so I donÂt know if this is what normally happens. It seems like to get a clean cut he has to move back a few inches into the lawn. I find myself with a new bare area around the perimeter of each bed, that then I feel needs filling. Considering IÂd already installed edging plants, IÂd rather not. He does the edges twice a year, in between I go in and pull out any grass or weeds that seed or jump in. I just bought a proper half moon edger, before that he used a small shovel. Will that make a difference? Or is it part of what happens with this system, that the bed gets gradually wider?

I am not anti-rock. There are a lot of variables, koffman, such as the heat density of the rock the transfer qualities, size etc.. As far as pushing through the rock, that is handled by keeping the rock away from the crown of the hosta. Since you are in 7b this would be a decent zone for growing hosta. Adding rock, depending on how much sunshine the rock will get and your exact conditions, elevation, size of the rock, material of the rock, etc. you would increase your 'zone' slightly or maybe a one half zone (????). I like rock, big rocks, I don't like it as a mulch. However, personal preferences aside, Rocks are an incremental increase in your 'zone'. Will it slip you from 7b to an 8a? Perhaps if you are close to the line. In any event in your location I would look at any increase in heat as a negative for growing hosta. The more rock, the bigger the rock, the greater the heat coefficient the greater the solar heat gain. In cold climates using rock would extend the season, maybe extremely slightly, maybe noticeably; only a real life test would tell. Passive solar using stone or concrete to store solar heat in homes is very effective and was even used by the Anasazi Indians thousands of years ago who carved out their homes in cliffs facing South and such that the sun shone in to heat the dwelling when the sun was low in the winter and the dwelling was shaded when the sun was high in the summer. I wouldn't worry about pips getting through as long as you don't cover them with heavy rock. I have had hosta that,over many years, grew through landscaping fabric and squeezed the fabric into a solid block of plastic with the hosta eyes growing and thriving through the holes they poked through. Unbelievable!!! If you like a rock bed and are willing to trade off less optimum growing conditions for the hosta, then that is a personal choice that no one can say is right or wrong. In any event rocks can be removed, albeit not easily in many cases. Jon PS, a few years ago I watched as a contractor used a wet/dry vac to vacuum up pea stone behind a rock wall. The stone was for drainage behind the wall, however it kept falling into the hole as the contractor was digging it out for a deck footing. If removing the stone you may put in and eventually get tired of becomes necessary this might be a good trick to remember. OK, I have shared enough of my ramblings and potentially useless thoughts.....for now.