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.

Azaleas, rhodys, blueberries all do best in moisture retentive soil, not so much in sand. And deer do eat them. For years I had an area below an ancient massive limbed-up pine that stayed dry (imagine that, dry here :)) both from the tree roots and the canopy. The tree ended up laying on my house in 2007, but until then I put all my spreaders in that area that wouldn't be as manageable in better, moister soil. Obedient plant, japanese anemone, siberian iris was OK, assorted euphorbia, yarrow, rudbekias, inula hookerii, sedum. Annual nigella loved it, so did linaria Canon J Went. Some of the perennial geraniums, and the dreaded verbena bonariensis looked pretty cool there. Don't be afraid of the Home Depot steer manure, I think I may have used 100 bags easily over the years and put down more next door. Just keep in mind if you can't lift the bag easily, chances are they have a shipment in that's wet. Most of the bags should be light enough a woman can handle, then product is dry enough to toss with hands and odor free (or very close).

Thanks for the help! It's funny I was reading more about Zinnias and many places said they like fertile soil. I also read how roses like well drained soil and mine are thriving in slightly amended clay, about6 of them. It just goes to show ya never really can go by what the "books'say. I will amend these area maybe this fall but they are just way to long to deal with it now and I already have my work cut out for what I have started and haven't finshed from last year. I just don't have the money to buy all that I need to to amend it all or buy the plants for and I like to get what I've started already looking lush before I go starting anymore beds. So with all that said I've got some combos that I think I'm going to try and work with and hope they do well enough. Anything is better then what I have now! So Cosmos, zinnias, poppies, and yarrows (have some I can transplant). I think those will do nice to fill in the area and give me the meadow look I'm wanting (for now).

"Dave, would you say ANY amount of compost(finished) is bad in a container? For instance, if it was something like 5 parts sphagnum pm, 5 parts perlite and 1 part finished compost." What I am saying is it won't be a source of nutrients for the plants. Organic soil mixes get around the problem by using water soluble ingredients like humus, manures, and meals. Otherwise compost's use in containers depends on the amount used relevant to the other ingredients. Compost on its own or in very large amounts can compact, drain poorly and suffocate roots, and create water table problems in containers. Don't get me wrong I am a big composter and use truckloads on my soil gardens annually. But its use in containers is a totally different animal, especially when expecting it to provide nutrients for the plants. Compost as a source of nutrients is a two-stage process, which is why it is primarily a soil amendment, not a 'fertilizer'. Part 2 of the process is present in garden soil but can't survive in containers. Dave