The soil in Tennessee is clay. While I've not been everywhere in Tennessee everywhere I have been the soil has been clay. You do need to amend that soil with organic material, compost is organic material, but it need not be the only type of organic material.

A far better place for the grass clippings is right back where they came from, the lawn. Recycling grass clippings, mulch mowing, puts back into the soil 1/2 the annual nutrient needs of that lawn.

Most people, each year where they are available, rake up, bag up, and pay someone to haul the leaves away and they are put someplace, often where they contribute pollution to nearby streams or other bodies of water.
Often those leaves can be had by others for free, sometimes there is a small charge. Check around to see where those leaves are hauled to.

kimmq is kimmsr

Where are you in Tn? I'm in E. Tn. and yes the soil here is mostly clay. What is around your foundation though, is whatever the contractor put there. If you have a basement, it probably has high levels of the pure clay from what was excavated deep down. If you're on a slab, it could be what was scraped away from the soil surface, then just back filled. That could have slightly better soil. The good news? Clay soils are very nutritious. The bad news... they have no organic matter and the texture is horrendous.

I'm not sure what you consider 'proper' for a landscaping bed. You said you put in limes(?), and you want a hedge of them?

Keep in mind that really, whatever you want to use as mulch is a personal preference. Some people, even after amending their soil, like the clean look of the stones. Usually though, they have to use a landscape fabric, as keeping stone-mulched beds free of weeds can be a chore.

What look are you hoping for? What varieties of shrubs, types of plants (perennial flowers, annuals, edibles etc...) do you envision? What level of maintenance are you willing to invest, and what is your general budget? Sure moving all that stone is work, but work is just time... or a small financial output to a neighbor kid.

Before I would make any other organic matter recommendations, it's beneficial to get the feedback first. Oh, one last question... in what length of time are you hoping to make this a reality? Do you want to wake up and it's done, or are you willing to live under 'it's a work-in-progress' idea?

Thank you all for your advice so far.

I make no claim to know what I'm doing. I'm young and this is my first home. I have had some help from a nice gentleman whose nearby property is flush with trees and shrubs, but much of the advice he has given has been contradictory to what I have read on these forums (e.g. throw out that clay when planting and fill with bagged soil).

I'm in White County, right at the base of the Plateau. I'd say I'm in zone 7a, but I'm literally a few miles from the line on the map.

What I have is patience and a willingness to work in the yard a little each evening and on weekends. What I don't have is enough extra money to hire a professional landscaper.

And I know my vision isn't very well constructed, but I mostly envisioned Little Lime Hydrangeas, knockout roses, and the evergreens I have in place. I wasn't sure I could make that happen, so I basically thought I would go from there with whatever results I achieved.

I'll say this--I don't mind the stones, but all I have read said that planting in clay is too much for a lot of plants, and amending individual holes seems to be discouraged.

It would be a continual work-in-progress. I honestly enjoy tinkering around in the garden more than I thought I would.

The way I did my clay perennial beds was a hybrid of fast and slow methods. I don't like hauling off and replacing soil because that soil is being 'mined' somewhere else. I preferred to work with what I had. That's where I differ from your neighbor, although his method would work. I tilled in some compost up front because you obviously can't till after planting shrubs. Then mulch heavily every year with leaves, grass clippings, shredded yard waste mulch (free from my city mulch site), or wood chips (delivered free from my electric utility). Over time the soil food web will incorporate organic matter into the soil and improve the texture and fertility. It took a few years but those beds are much better now. It requires patience and a change in the way you think about 'mulch'. Most people want a durable mulch they don't have to replace; this method is based on decomposition of the mulch and frequent additions to it.

If you can do a big chunk of it at once, you might consider having a load of compost delivered or borrow a pickup truck. It's cheaper than bagged products that way.

Okay first, you'll need to pull back those stones. If you don't have a 'hard rake' yet, invest in a good one. If you have one, and it's cheap, work with it until it breaks. If you need one, you will forever appreciate a good tool - get the best one you can afford. For a hard rake, you'll want one with 2 connecting points on the edges of the head (bow rake.) The type where the handle makes a single connection with the rake head is not designed for heavy materials, nor as good for long-term landscaping tasks such as moving stones or leveling beds (the back of a bow rake is perfect for moving a lot of dirt and putting a nice finishing touch on the project.) Get one that is size-appropriate for your height. These choices are what will take much of the drudgery and frustration out of already difficult jobs.

Next, since it will be an ongoing project, break it down into stages. I do suggest that when it comes time to buy the plants, you buy all of the same varieties of plants at the same time. They can be like kitchen tiles. If you don't get the same exact shrub, at the same time, colors of both foliage and flowers may not match. Do all of one type at one stage, then later get all the next type, etc... If you have a decent size back yard, and can afford it, buy at least one extra of each shrub and plant it in an out of the way place, or in a spot where it can be moved later. It's not uncommon for a shrub to die, and a small investment ahead of time can save you headaches later if you need to fill something in. If you have so many plantings that this is financially a problem, skip it.

Start with the rocks. Get a good size tarp, a wheelbarrow, and a round shovel. Start with pulling back the stones in the areas that will get the same plantings. Place the tarp on an out-of-the-way corner of the lawn and start dumping stones on half the tarp. Use the other half to fold back over to keep them clean and to keep the neighbors happy. This will kill the grass, so if you have extra driveway space, just dump them on the driveway and cover with the tarp. Keep removing more stones as you gather OM (see next paragraph.)

Next step is to decide if you are going to buy the soil amendments, or build the soil yourself. Since you expressed a desire to build your own (the vastly cheaper route) begin piling on any organic matter you can. Either start a compost pile, or just start tossing on what OM you can gather on the now stone-free areas of the beds... or both. Some very cheap examples of OM resources are coffee houses (free,) wood chips from the companies that trim trees from power lines (free, or a small tip that makes them both happy to dump it where you need it, and happy to return with more,) kitchen scraps, grass clippings (learn how to compost these properly... a great source of organic matter, but a pain if not used correctly,) city leaf collections (even out of season, some cities use the same place each year and uncollected leaves piled up become what is called leaf mold... great stuff for lightening clay!,) and county dumps (many dumps in Tn. are now separating out all tree products and shredding them. They either give it away free, or sell it at reasonable prices to county residents.) There are many other sources for organic matter, just keep your eyes open and you might be surprised at what becomes available.

Let it pile up high, and keep it pulled back a little (or really, just don't let it pile up too high) against any plant you want to keep. As it begins to break down (kept relatively moist, organic matter breaks down fast in Tn. My 8' of long grass and hay mulch on my garden beds broke down to an inch over the summer and was incorporated into the soil by the worms) add more and/or turn it into the soil (next paragraph.)

Next you'll want to buy or borrow a 'garden fork'. You can use a shovel, but a good fork works better. At least once a year, and as often as every 1 - 3 months, turn the organic matter into the soil. If roots are in the way, you can keep it on top, or pull out the plantings that you don't want, and just mulch around what you want to keep. The worms will incorporate the organic matter into the clay around established plants, but it's a much slower process.

If you did a good job at scrounging OM, you will be ready in a year or 2 for your new plantings. Of course, the longer you wait, the better, but strike a balance. When you dig clay, and turn in OM, the expansion of the volume can be surprising. Clay packs very tightly, once you begin to loosen it, you may quickly find you'll need to pull some out. This will depend on your desired level of the bed.

When it comes time to remove the old plants, think about reusing them somewhere else, or use them as trade to get people to help.

Lastly, decide what you do want as mulch. Organic mulches will continue to improve the soil and have many benefits. The downside is continual replenishment. Stones are fine, and when used with a weed barrier of some sort, look good and clean. The downsides are weeds that poke through when no weed barrier is used, the soil stays in a 'stasis', well-intentioned landscapers trying to weed eat around, or on top of stones inevitably break a window, and stones don't always stay in place... matching them, and replacing them ain't cheap.

Anyway, that should get you started, and if you piddle around a little
here and there, you'll be surprised at how fast removing the stones
goes. BTW... a bbq gets family and friends more in the mood to help, and
if you tackle the entire project in stages, the work for each step is
nothing.

Soil is composed of the mineral portion (the sand, silt, and clay particles), organic material, air, and water. There is nothing wrong with clay soils that a goodly amount of organic material will not help. Many people will tell someone with clay soil to throw that soil out and replace it with something called "topsoil" (usually a sandy mix of some kind) or "bagged" soil or sand, or something else that will do little to help while what that soil needs is organic material. Some people object to putting organic material into soil because "organic material disappears". Well, yeah, because the Soil Food Web digests the organic material to provide nutrients to the plants growing in that soil, so the organic material will need to be replaced periodically.

Do not put down fabric or plastic "weed barriers" because, as many of us have found, they do little to keep unwanted plants from growing. You will never have a "weed" free garden.

kimmq is kimmsr