Look at this as a wonderful opportunity. Less organic material for you to find and labor to add for your plants. If I wanted a lawn with the plantings I know how I would go about it. Three to eight inches isn't very much, so it could be all done by hand ... if we're not talking about a ginormous amount of space. First I would get out as many garden hoses as I have and use them to sketch out the wanted lawn area. Doing it this way gives you a good idea of how it will look in real life, as opposed to a pretty drawing on paper. You can leave them there and reconsider after you've lived with the plan a few days. Move as needed. Once your ready to begin, gather up the mulch that's in the future lawn area and use it to create berms in the flower bed areas, keeping in mind these will decrease in height quite a bit over the next year. But with luck you will still have enough added height to add drama to the floral scene. IF the flowers are to be viewed from both sides , the height needs to be in the center of the beds, with tallest plants in the middle. I did this a couple times with a picket fence at the front of the house and the extra height of those taller plants on the small berm not only helped give more privacy to the front yard and front windows, but the street view was much more eye catching. Everything just looked so much bigger than expected. I'm not talking about a high berm, just enough. ;) Vary the heights of the raised areas too or the whole thing gets too predictable. If by chance you find old dead, thatch where a lawn used to be, and it doesn't seem suitable to be planting on top of , this too can be used for added flower bed height. Just clear a space, throw all that thatch can be used, then cover with more of the compost material. Regular shrubs and perennials can work their way through that sort of thing just fine over the next year or so it takes to break down. I have routinely planted directly in mushroom compost that comes from big trucks ( the bagged is finer) and never had any problems. But that doesn't mean yours isn't slightly different, plus your different climate. What about watering an area and then checking later to see how well it holds moisture ? Heck, throw a test plant in there while your at it and see what happens to it. Hopefully you will not need to spend $$ on more soil to maintain a moisture level. Better to spend on plants and cool hardscaping! Oh, and the perfect birdbath.:) Now get out your collection of garden books and magazines and have fun looking at all the beautiful designs you admired in the past. You have a wonderful, fertile blank slate to work with. How exciting.

Jim, Way back when, back in your grandfathers' times, people bought from local plantsmen who did the learning curve for them. The plantsmen sold what they could grow well. So when those plants were bought locally, they thrived. I'm lucky to have seen the rugosa species growing both in my garden in totally-un-copacetic clay and three miles away in a sandy bar deposit along Flat Creek (which runs mostly across limestone and which carries a bed load of reworked sand from a massive sandstone. There's not much humus in that bar deposit. But the rugosas growing in it are about ten feet tall, and they are unpampered. Same species, in my clay are three feet tall. A passalong rugosa was doing really well up in Ewing Virginia because it was planted next to a next-to-road depression (not well enough maintained to call it a gulley) but a neighbor's plant, farther from the drainage was struggling, as is mine in sandy soil but with little continuous drainage to nurture it. What makes those roses tough in one soil, makes them weak in other soils. And, because, so many modern roses are not grown in soil, but in modified greenhouse soils, understanding why one fails and another putters along is a lot harder. Maybe putting all roses on the same rootstock, and modifying the soils for that rootstock is the best way to dum-- , er, simplify rose growing. But our choice of rootstocks is the limiting factor. And there is NO one rootstock fits all solutions for North America. So we just muddle along. Ann, muddling.

I don't know what it does during the winter in your zone but Heuchera (Coral Bells). I have it growing in a very shady location under a blue atlas cedar and pretty much ignore it and it does surprisingly well. Whenever it rains, it gets a growth spurt. The leaves come it many different colors too but I've found the common green do best. Also Vinca minor would do very well & gets pretty flowers but might be invasive so check on that first. Another that would do well is Ivy~ I don't know if the variegated is as invasive but even if you mulch, you're going to get weeds so I'd plant something.

Lindac, it's ok. Nobody is upset with anybody anymore. We all have moments when we are not at our best or most pleasant selves. Mel is actually kind of funny and seems like a nice person who just had an accidental adverse reaction, kind of like a brief allergy. She did apologize and has been a pleasant participant in other discussions. I think we can all relate to her frustrations about product labeling being confusing or misleading. Mel, I SO know what you mean about Aunt Flow. She can make any woman temporarily nuts! She possesses every woman at times and I don't know any woman without a story to tell about her devious, unexpected, and unpredictible powers. A misunderstanding can be the start of a great friendship, so hopefully we have several of those brewing. I hope to hear more from you. Please don't feel bad if you get corrected or contradicted. It happens to everyone. It can feel insulting even when I know the person didn't mean it that way at all. And that's what these gardening discussions are good for - so folks can escape the burdens of misinformation and to learn which parts of gardening have right/wrong answers (like soil PH) and which parts are subjective to opinions and regional quirks (like how to stake tomatoes) and have no definitive right/wrong answers. Are those hostas about ready to bloom? I was curious when that would happen in 4a. Can't we all just get along? Yes, Rodney, we can.