u/OffToTheLizard

[Southeast Michigan, Suburban area]

Hello! My husband, MIL, and I have been working on redoing our garden beds for a few years now. I prefer native plants when possible, but am open to non-native ornamentals when they aren't considered invasive. My husband and MIL don't really care, but respect my preferences for my yard and try to honor them. But last week, I was traveling, and they bought a few plants, among them two burning bushes. I've just started going down the BB rabbit hole and now I'm not sure what to do with these brand new plants. I was hoping this sub could advise about how invasive they are in my area. I can look into returning them, or if they're super invasive I may just destroy the plants and cut my losses. Thanks!

(ps, since this is reddit I know some people will probably advise returning the husband/MIL too. They're not going anywhere--husband insists they asked at the garden center and were assured they weren't invasive 🙄)

So on the left is a rose bed with stone and landscaping fabric underneath. On the right is the same flower bed except I removed all the stones. I took the stones and started washing them on the screen on the orange bucket. There was an unbelievable amount of organic material mixed with the stone.

On the right I laid down cardboard and started to put down the cleaned stones.

Farther to the right and not pictured are some big ass 100’ pine trees that don’t belong to me.

So my question is - is this the only way to renew the stones and rid all the organic material that makes it look like crap?

Prior to the stones I use to use mulch, but squirrels continually dive bomb it creating holes for their nuts and weeds spring up from there. I thought stones would cut down on maintenance, but it hasn’t. When I try to blow out or hose out the material from the stones is just washes them away.

I’d appreciate any advice :)