Do-it-yourself landscaping

When we bought our house, it came with a little landscaped area along the front of it. There wasn't anything special about it, and it mostly contains unremarkable bushes which are neither pretty nor fragrant. It is mainly fillter plants the builder threw in there to say it has been landscaped.

For the first 18 months that we lived in this house, I ignored this area completely. Recently I noticed how the yard had taken over the landscaping completely and beat it into submission. Our yard is bermudagrass, which spreads quickly and without mercy. The most annoying thing is it spreads underground, so you can't just pull the grass, because there are thousands of root-like things (I think they are called stolons) under the ground ready to sprout new grass as soon as you do. No, you have to dig it out, and in my case, I had to till it out with a garden cultivator/tiller. It only took a week of work to do. In the end I had about five garbage bags full of grass, weeds, rocks, bricks, glass, plastic, nails, etc that were left just inches below the grass by the home builder. Sadly, if I don't put in some sort of wall around the landscaping with some weed blocking material, the grass will be back in no time. However, right now it looks pretty good. Not perfect, but much better than it looked a few weeks ago.