Yes, have had experience with street print asphalt when serving as grounds committee chairman on a large southern plantation. As plantation roads needed resurfacing we had the simple brick pattern print asphalt installed to delineate golf cart pathways across the roadways as an additional safety measure. The price was right. Many residents mentioned to me how much they liked the idea. The process had just been introduced and the company installing it was looking for a showcase spot. Then the downtown area began using the idea for cross walks in its revitalization projects. Very attractive addition to the street scape. Visited there last month and all seems to be weathering well. However, before using this method on a major driveway surface I would want to meet with a company rep and visit some of their large installations.

ColMuldrow, I think you have had a lot of suggestions here for things to do IN the beds and you were looking for things to OUTLINE the beds. No one has really addressed the virtue of your idea of outlining the beds, and I think the message in that is that outlining them may or may not be a good design decision. Could you maybe tell us what is driving your desire to outline them? That would assist in a design discussion... this being a landscape design forum. And in design, purpose often drives decision-making. For me there is some confusion, as I may have suggested in my post, between the image of what you have, and what you want to achieve. What you have is kind of hard to argue with, and because of its dominant nature, trying to put a different kind of landscaping underneath it would have a bit of a futile feel to it. And so, a tidily outlined bed would have a slightly surreal feeling to me in this setting. It is obviously your yard and your preferences will prevail, but given that you've chosen a landscape design forum rather than either a plant forum or a local nursery for advice, I'm afraid that does drive the kind of advice you'll get (unless the conversation turns to ivy...). That said, there are not many plants that will stay exactly where you want them to in the conditions you have here; at least, it may depend on the trees, but I don't think so. Plants travel in response to where they find moisture and light and nutrients. Areas under trees are notoriously short of these attributes, and you may find a carefully planted edge wandering from where you laid it. That is why I suggested a physical edge, which if nothing else would create moisture-retaining areas in the soil that would keep plants inclined to stay where you put them, and allow you to correct if they wander. Yardvaark, I thought we were all going to try to get along. The key to doing that is, I think, in your last remark where you characterize opposing advice as an attack. It is not, and regarding it as such will always lead where this thread has led. Opposing advice, even if it criticizes advice previously given, is just the way the cookie crumbles when you ask a room full of people who are not an organization or hierarchy of any kind for advice. You will not get a single answer, the answers may disagree, and as the asker, you simply have to sort that out and the people in the room have to come to terms with being disagreed with. You could have opposed my advice to use ferns on some basis, and I would not have regarded that as at attack on me, but rather as contextualizing the advice I gave the OP. I might have responded, or reiterated, but probably not if I thought your additional advice enhanced the OP's ability to evaluate the option. I don't regard it as an attack on me when someone denigrates my ingrained aversion to foundation planting; I simply see it as a good thing that the OP gets a variety of advice. If all else fails, we should all be addressing the OP, and not each other. Karin L

Bev27, if that "less than 20 years" is on a replacement roof, that's about all you get in So-Fla. I do not know why original tile roofs last 25 years but replacement tile roofs only last 16-18 years... BIG MYSTERY!?!? You'd think the tract home builders would be using the cheaper underlayment, etc. Might have to do with trusses sagging over time...? (FYI: if you ARE on your original tile roof, when they strip it off, every ceiling in your house will crack a little, because the trusses will "bounce back" when that tremendous weight is removed. No biggie, a bit of spackling and paint... but save the interior re-mod/re-paint 'til after the roof job. ;') I'm in Ft. Laud, got the worst of Wilma, and the houses with cheapie thin shingles took flight, while those with heavier higher quality shingles were fine. If your area of SW FL has not yet adopted the Miami-Dade codes (as Broward has), then it's up to you to get familiar with them, and get quotes based on that... e.g. RING-SHANK NAILS, closer nail spacing, etc. That said, NO, you do NOT want to downgrade to asphalt shingles. The concrete (not thin clay barrel tiles) tiles will last 2.5-3 times longer than shingles, PLUS the esthetics, property value, and COOLING COSTS issues. If upfront cost is an issue, the recent run-up in values should give you plenty of equity to borrow against. Having my own home plus rental props in So-Fla, I realize that I am really just RENTING MY ROOF... yep, it's about $100/month/property! (OOPS, that's 2003 pricing... ) The experience vireyafl had in Andrew with CEMENT-glued tiles is no longer a problem if the new EPOXY FOAM is used--it's rated for 208MPH! Make sure you get that too. The METAL roofing sounds promising, but of course the problem is finding a roofer that KNOWS how to install it properly. Perhaps mfrs. websites list roofers they have certified via training and inspection of their jobs. Of course since the attic is well-nigh useless in So-Fla, I'd REALLY rather have the all-concrete roof (pre-stressed T-sections anyone?), and only have to worry about caulking up the seams every N years. ;')

@pingpong: "Does anyone have anecdotal ..." I'm an engineer - not a civil engineer - but I will reiterate what others have told you: The driveway fails because the foundation (class 5 limestone - probably) is failing - due to movement of the earth. Each time the foundation moves - it creates more space for it to move again. Also water seeps into the cracks and errodes the foundation more. This is a fact of nature. If you put a layer of asphalt over the current - you will still have the same foundation. Those cracks will eventually telegraph through the new asphalt. How long it will take? There is no textbook answer. To do it properly, the driveway needs to be removed and the foundation needs to replaced / compacted. As far a concrete cracking... that's why they cut the concrete - to control the stress cracks. It seems like you want a 'magic bullet' answer?