Thanks for the advice, Kidhorn. I'll give that a try. The trees are all around the edges of the lawn, and while there are roots in the area, there was some nice grass back there at one point. The neighbors said this house used to be on the annual garden walk every year because the backyard was so beautiful. There were actually more trees at that time. Apparently several were cut down a few years ago due to borers. The yard only went to hell over the past 2-3 years. I have no illusions of getting it into the newspapers again, but I do hold out hope of getting the grass back at least. People say I'm a dreamer... :-) Thanks again. This is pretty new to me, so I appreciate your help.

This question is pretty basic. I already have a patio made from Unilock pavers, done professionally. It is made from 2 sizes of Canterbury pavers, a rectangle and a square. The whole patio is edged in contrasting Hollandstone. I now want to create matching stepping stones leading from the patio through an adjacent garden bed. I also want to edge the bed with matching Hollandstone pavers. I am planning to do this work myself. I will not have any help (husband wants no part of it. Crazy garden projects are just not his thing). For the stepping stones individual pavers would be too small. So I decided to put 2 rectangles and 2 squares together to make up each unit, which would be about 10 inches square. Since I don't want them to sink or tilt, I decided to do this the right way and dig out some topsoil and lay paver base of finely crushed stone. The landscape supplier had stone made for this purpose. The question is, how much? Considering that the stepping stone units will not be anchored to anything, what depth of crushed stone will be suitable? I would have to dig down through about 8 inches of topsoil to reach clay. I sure hope I don't have to do that. Ditto for the hollandstone edging. There the plan is to make a mowing edge for the garden bed. They will be laid with the long edge perpendicular to the edge of the bed, which matches how the trim runs on the patio. So it needs to be low enough to mow over and not be scalped by the lawn mower. Can anyone point me toward a site with some guidelines for what I want to do? The book I leafed through at the library was more directed toward big projects. Thanks!

Finish: Pacific Strong, a discontinued Bona waterbased urethane finish in two coats was applied over Duracraft stain. Chipping: small 1/8th" or bigger pieces of wood individually chip out from the wood floor upon light contact by shoes, full plastic laundry basics, kitchen garbage cans.An opening is left in the floor which is blond, like bare oak. It's not flaking off as I've seen can happen with drums during refinishing, nor are their wavy lines periodically. Rather it's chipping off with contact, as when a tree limb is placed in a chipper/shredder machine outdoors. As to the stairs, well both the stain and the finish are gone on the edges of the steps (the rounded part at the stair end). Bare wood remains and is very slippery compared to the rest of the step, where stain and finish give it a rougher surface texture. You can see the difference on the step and you can feel the lack of any finish on the edges, precisely where it is needed most. We keep the house humidified and run house temp at 64 in the winter. We don't abuse our floors. Thanks for your response. In all my many years owning several homes, I have never encountered anything like this.

In our more moist climate I wouldn't try either the Lysimachia nummulariua "aurea" (Golden Creeping Jenny) or any but clumping forms of Ajuga. Both can spread quite a bit, so would need a fair amount of time to keep in control, unlike in . I imagine that when Wantanamara suuggested wintergreen, she meant Gaultheria procumbens, a native groundcover that's a source of the flavor wintergreen. It would be fine there, but couldn't outcompete with Pachysandra, so would need separation. She also suggested Epimediums. I think clumping ones would be nice there, especially since the raised plants would show the early spring flowers particularly well. There was a thread on them earlier this season. I like Mayflower's suggestion of hakone grass, either the white variegated or the gold as it would light up the area, but only spreads slowly. The Polygonatum humile I've seen is solid dark green, so though the leaves would contrast with texture, and would be a bit darker than Pachysandra, I don't think it would provide the contrast that the Hakonechloa macra All Gold would. I don't know if there are variegated forms of P. humile.