Ben - Thanks for reporting back. It's always nice to see how projects have worked out! Your beds look great and the plants in them happy. A few suggestions: Put in edging between your grass and beds because if you don't, the grass will move into the wonderful soil in the beds you have created, and it's difficult to get out once established. You can cut a v shaped ditch that you renew once or twice a year; or get the heaviest duty black commercial edging and sink it to the rim so the grass hides it; or if you can find Trex type of stuff cut thin for edging. I've read that steel edging isn't kid friendly, and rocks won't do a good job of keeping the grass out. You might also want to make your beds about a foot wider to give your blueberries enough room to grow and a place to move your strawberries to when the blueberries start to shade them. (As it is you may have to prune the back side of the blueberries when they get larger to keep them from rubbing the fence.) Widening your beds needn't require the same difficulty in digging if you follow Diggingthedirt's suggestion: "You can start layering organic material in a swath - this is called the lasagne method and it works really well in areas where digging is difficult. You can search on garden web for more info about this system - just about everyone loves it and writes about their methods. The thick mulch of "stuff" - fresh (free) manure, used coffee grounds, newspapers, grass clippings, dry leaves, etc, will slowly break down, enriching the soil around your rocks and encouraging earthworms to loosen the soil for you. If you start creating this now, by next spring you'll have wonderful soil that will be much easier to dig." You can do this right over your grass if the bottom layer is a bunch of layers of newspaper or unwaxed corrugated cardboard. I'll add to the votes to swap out the pine tree for something that doesn't get so large so fast. Probably the most common mistake people make in planting is putting in plants without sufficient thought to how large the plant will ultimately be and then having to deal with the problems created further down the road. I figure you've got perhaps 10 years before it gets to the point that it's going to need a professional to get it out unless you have experience felling trees with a chain saw in tight quarters. I live in an area where white pine is native, and we have lots in our woods, and in the woods or as shade trees in our pasture I love them. At our previous house we had them near the house. They dropped pitch on the cars or whatever else was nearby, and dropped large branches when we had wet snow or heavy wind along with rain. In wet soils with heavy snow or rain and wind, the entire tree sometimes tips over, damaging whatever is in their path. When it's a 70 or 80 foot tree, that can be quite a bit of damage! It doesn't need to be removed this year or even next, but the longer you leave it, the more accustomed you will get to its screening affect, and the more you will miss it when you have to remove and replace it. (And realisically, it isn't a question of whether you will need to remove it, just a question of when and how expensive it will be; pruning the west side won't solve your problem.) Some research here on the conifers forum or the trees forum or at the American Conifer Society's website may give you some ideas more realisically sized for your site. Are you looking for year-round screening or just during warm weather? That will help determine whether you get a deciduous or evergreen replacement. You may be able to plant a replacement now several feet away, and not remove the white pine for a couple of years to let the replacement gain some size. Good luck and congratulations on a great start to your gardening. (Warning - it can be addictive!)

I did my undergrad research Thesis on Camassia quamash in the Willamette Valley several years ago. I studied many populations of quamash growing in pasture grass, and a few in places that could be considered 'lawns.' The camas comes up and blooms before the grass gets too long, so they appear to be fine as companians. As long as you can let your grass grow until late in the summer, I bet the Camas will do well. I would clear several inces of grass around each bulb when you plant to give it room to develop.

Since you're using these mysterious "centimeter" measurement thingies, you're not in the States. So you might actually have clay, or could have very compacted sand or silt. All three react surprisingly similarly. Spraying with any clear shampoo or baby shampoo (in the States, I recommend White Rain, Suave, or generic baby shampoo as they're all very cheap, but I'm not sure what brands are available anywhere else) at about 50 to 75 grams per hundred square meters will, over time, sometimes help loosen the soil. You can repeat that monthly. Exact amounts aren't critically important and moderate overapplication won't do any harm. If the tight soil problem is chemical, the shampoo will help, but correcting the soil will help more. A good soil test would help determine what resources require rebalancing. Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with the quality of any soil testing labs outside the United States. 3 mm pebbles can be ignored, they won't get in the way and the grass or plants will simply send their roots around them. 30 mm is kind of large. If copious in the soil, I'd try to clear them down to at least 10 cm depth if you can without killing yourself. You don't need to get every single one, just most. With an enormous amount of rocks, it might pay you in terms of time and energy and stress to have the property power raked and then box bladed. Properly done, power raking will remove the rocks for you, and box blading will even everything out. I'm generally not a fan of excessive soil disturbance because it damages (or destroys temporarily) the soil biology and ruins the natural drainage channels. However, heavy rock infestation is an exception to that rule and in this case I have no objections. Done once, the soil will recover (full recovery can take three years, but most will complete in a year, tops), and that's that.

@dchall_san_antonio: Thanks! I've never done this test, so I have no idea what I'm looking for. I'll post the 48 hour picture tomorrow night... @yardtractor1: Thanks again. I wouldn't say it's representative of my whole yard -- just the very worst area. I took about 10 samples from that ~400 sf area, each to a depth of about 3". Some pics of my lawn might help folks. Sorry if this is overkill. I'm now enjoying the conversation, though! Here's a shot of my front yard. This was SODDED by the builder when I moved in just over 2 years ago. You can see the many bare spots, dormant spots, and overall pitiful shape it's in despite 2 weeks of torrential rains and decent temps. Oh, it's North-facing, by the way. The back of my house faces almost due South. Here's a close-up of a spot in that front yard: Here's a shot down one side of my house. Like the front, it was sodded. Like the front, it's very patchy -- some areas grow fine, while others are thin, never grow above about 2" even in ideal conditions, and go dormant at the first sign of trouble: OK, this is interesting to me. Here's a shot of the very back corner of the side. It's in the way back of the picture above. This was also sodded by the builder, but the interesting thing is they ran out of sod on the first day and left this part bare. A few days later, they came back with sod that looked VERY different to me from the rest of the front/sides. This part of my lawn has really thrived. It's not a beautiful carpet like some of you have, but it's thick, grows high, stays green longer, and it spread like crazy across my barren backyard last year (you'll see that in a minute): Here's a close-up of the grass in that section: Here's a shot of my backyard. This was SEEDED by the builder. You can see how the "bottom" half looks OK -- not great, but decent. I've basically observed that healthy section of the side yard spread last fall and spring until it got to sections that it didn't "like." I know I'm personifying grass. Forgive me. But you can basically see an imaginary line where the backyard goes from "decent" to "awful". This top part is where I took all the soil samples, since I've struggled the most with it. I've spent many hours out there the past two years raking out rocks, watering, dethatching, spreading bags of soil/manure/compost, overseeding, and of course, following a "novice" fertilizing program (sporadic Milorganite and Scott's products). Much to my chagrin, it's basically been weed and clover territory, with very patchy areas of grass that never grows much higher than 1". Here's a closeup of an area from the "awful" zone -- the top half of my backyard: So there you go. Thanks again to anyone who posts with ideas or info -- much appreciated!