I decided to turn a shady patch where grass would not grow under a crabapple tree and sloping down the hill from it into a woodland garden.

Now that I have put in a hundred or so plants, I discover that I have a thousand or so crabapple seedlings - mowing what pathetic grass there was had kept them down. Oh, and the robins who come in the winter to eat the crabapples have also been eating multiflora rose - a dozen or two of those to deal with.

A crabapple now joins Norway maple, Japanese maple and ornamental cherry on the list of trees under which you should not plant a garden. It might just join the list of trees you should not plant.

What groundcovers smother seedlings? I've seen pachysandra do it - lamiastrum certainly could - will lamium and asarum do the same? Meanwhile, weed, weed, weed...just what I needed.