I've recently built a new flower garden in the front of our home. I've raised it up slightly from the ground level using fill dirt. What I've found is a problem with weeds & ants in the dirt. I've added mulch around all of the flowers & this has seemed to help a great deal. I intended to add a stone walkway through the garden using marble chips. My question is will the marble chips also resist weeds the way that the mulch has? Should I put down a layer of mulch & then lay the marble chips on top of that? I would hate to lay the marble chip walkway on top of the dirt, have weeds, then have to redo. Any thoughts? Thanks, -Bill

I would like to create a circular flower garden in my back yard, and really like the looks of the retaining wall stones that have become so popular. Anyone know of any simple calculations or web sites that will help me to caculate needed materials? and help in the keeping the spacing exact enough to make both levels come out to an exact block count? thus not having to cut the blocks. Thank you in advance. Tracy