I like the Japanese yard. Is there any physical border between the sod, the gravel, and the wood chip mulch? Is there anything under the gravel and wood chip mulch other than dirt?
I asked Julie Messervy to answer this question, since she designed the garden you're talking about. She said, "There's nothing between the large chunky stones of the "pond" and the sod, just a well-kept clean spaded edge. And we do have landscape fabric beneath the gravel, but not the mulch, since we normally have groundcovers planted there."
