I posted this in the other gardening forum, but after looking around, this may be a more appropriate place for it..

Here it goes:

I'm having an idea...

In our backyard we have a huge patio, and off to the side against the fence we have a large area with a 5-6' wide fountain, up the side of the house is a sidewalk, and on either side of the sidewalk are planting beds..

Now, we currently have rain lillies, silver dragon liriope, and around the fountain we have some beautiful indian blanket flowers..

Problem is, I'm the one who tends to the beds, as my wife is a brown thumb and kills plants. Only problem with that is, we're always busy, and I don't have a lot of time to tend to the plant, and adding mulch every year is a big headache... Not only to go get all the huge amount of mulch we need, but also to spread it around.

So I'm thinking of pulling up all the mulch, pulling out all the rain lillies, pulling up the indian blankets, and even possibly the liriope.

What I'm thinking of doing is getting some of the really pretty river rock you can buy, and putting down a barrier of weed cloth, and using river rock in all the beds in the back... It's very pretty stuff, and it would be easier to maintain than mulch and a bunch of flowers I have to prune and such..

My real question is, what kind of small (less than 1-2ft) plants can live with the rocks? I see it at restaurants and stuff sometimes, but never take note of the plants.

Thoughts, opinions?