With respect to the front bed, I'm on side with removing the tree. The trunks really only look good from one angle, and from the other angles it's not a real beauty. And when it comes to suckers, I have very low tolerance! But what really bugs me in that bed is the shrubs, and I would totally rip them out as well and use that space to create a lower profile flowering garden. My urge is to open the space visually. If you want a tree, I don't see that it has to be in the bed; it could be closer to the front of the property. With the long narrow bed, if liriope will make you smile, you're a pretty happy person :-) it takes more to get a smile out of me, I'm afraid! But in these long narrow beds against a wall, it is often about what will grow the way you want, rather than about what we like, and I admit I've got a long and troubled history with trying to grow more interesting things in a bed like this, because almost anything tall (anything deciduous in particular) will always be snaking away from the wall toward the light. As a general rule, evergreen material will grow much more reliably upright even when the light is one-sided. So from a maintenance and looking tidy perspective, you could do a lot worse than a row of liriope, daylilies, or annuals. So much depends on what kind of a gardener you are; how much effort you want to go to to choose and source plants and so on, and then what kind of maintenance you want to do. For example, what would look quite spectacular along this wall, and go with the somewhat manicured impression that the house itself makes, would be an assortment of specialty conifers and evergreens, the type that are narrow and slow growing, either upright or weeping or just narrow by nature (or even spiralled or otherwise topiaried), either just mulched or dressed up with colourful lower-growing plants. But those plants you have to go hunting for, and it takes some work to arrange them. And then there's the option of containers (on gravel or mulch) and/or wall art. Or vines on trellises, that would require you to tuck them all the time and then clear them in winter. It all depends on what kind of work you want to do initially and ongoing. But what about the area along the fence? You might be able to create a more generous bed there. You can certainly borrow light from across the fence, and if you can also borrow airspace above the fence, then some small trees might even work. KarinL

Under the new deck - as you prepare the area, establish good basic drainage. There are a lot of ways to do that, but the easiest is with the final grade. Using a geomembrane/weedblock fabric is a sound idea. If it is well covered (the deck will do a lot of that) then a good quality membrane should last a decade or more. The cover over the membrane should be something that won't give new weed seeds that will find there way into that zone a foothold for germination. Rather than sand, I would suggest stone or gravel for that reason. The new raised bed -- the soil you are going to move is full of natural weed seeds. Practically, there isn't much you can do about that. It will continue to support germination whenever the conditions are right. As a bed it will also get new seeds from the surrounding environment. Once the bed is built, then a good mulch layer of 2-3 inches will help minimize new weed germination. But like all exposed beds, there will be weeds. For moving the soil to the new raised bed, you can just dig up the old, turn it over and put it in the new bed. Covering it with newspaper or a good mulch will prevent new germination, but when that cover is removed for planting then you face the same old problem. A different strategy, but more work, is to turn over or till the soil after it's in the new bed location, leave it exposed and then cultivate every week or two to disrupt newly germinated seedlings. The object here is to deplete the included weeds seeds by encouraging germination, then destroy the seedlings by cultivation, over and over again, until it's planted, then mulch.

You might want to get the book on tea roses - it is called something like Tea Roses - Old Roses for Warm Gardens. There are beautiful pictures of many many tea roses, growing in warm conditions in Australia. Check out 'Le Vesuve' - I think it is a tea/china hybrid. It has large elegant two colored pink blossoms. It is self supporting, and grows at least 8 ft tall and 8 ft wide & deep here - sort of a huge shrub - well covered with leaves a rounded shape. Blooms here in No Cal from April thru December. Jackie

ailinriley said: "angelao, Round-up and similar products containing glyphosate have no effect on the soil. You could spray it on bare dirt and plant immediately with no harm to your new plants." My (H. Kuska) reply: I would certainly like to see some documentation for that statement. Title: Glyphosate residues in a sandy soil affect tomato transplants. Author: Comish, P. S. Author affiliation: Hortic. Res. Advis. Stn., NSW Agric., Gosford, Australia. Published in: Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, volumn 32, pages 395-399, (1992). Abstract: "Glyphosate residues in a loamy sand soil were suspected of damaging transplanted tomatoes at Gosford in 1990. Field and glasshouse expts. were conducted to det. whether phytotoxic residues of glyphosate persist in this soil type and, if so, under what conditions. In the glasshouse expt, visible symptoms of glyphosate toxicity occurred in tomato seedlings transplanted into soil that was sprayed 1, 5 or 15 days earlier with glyphosate (360 g/L) at 4 L product/ha. Glyphosate also reduced plant dry wt. (16 days after transplanting), but only where soil nutrient deficiencies were car. after transplanting. In this case, seedlings transplanted 15 days after spraying suffered an ay. redn. in dry wt. of 57%. Greater redns. in dry wt. occurred where superphosphate (43 kg P/ha) was mixed through soil before spraying (75 v. 35% redn.). In the field, glyphosate residues reduced plant dry wt. 16 days after transplanting, even when transplanting followed spraying by up to 9 days, and possibly as many as 30. At 9 days, redns. of 50, 74 and 78% were recorded with glyphosate (360 g/L) applied at 2, 4 and 8 L/ha, resp. Effects of glyphosate on fruit yield were significant, but much smaller than effects on earlier plant dry wts. The phytotoxicity of glyphosate residues in this loamy sand results from a combination of inherently low P sorption capacity and application of superphosphate, leading to low adsorption of glyphosate by soil. This may be exacerbated when dry conditions occur between application and planting. Thus, a plant-back period of 3 wk could be considered safe when transplanting tomatoes into this sandy soil, provided some mixing of soil occurs at transplanting. It is recommended that farmers perform a simple bioassay to confirm safety."