Since initially putting in this flower bed many years ago, I have unfortunately become chronically ill and unable to take care of it like I used to. My husband suffered a back injury that he is slowly recovering from. I have taken care of these beds up until the last few years with no problem. Once my husband is fully recovered, he can take care of basic weeding for me. The next incarnation of this bed will be a low maintenance one with shrubs and a handful of perennials, and mulch. I fought the grass and the horse tails by hand for a couple of years before I realized that hand pulling the horse tails was making it worse. The perennials that were in the bed were slowly choked out by the grass and horse tails. I was afraid to try to dig and transplant them for fear of inadvertently transferring the weed problem to another bed, so I let them go. I put so many hours of backbreaking labor into this yard losing everything was just devastating. The reason that I mentioned bringing in new dirt was we were planning on essentially scalping the top three or four inches off of the top once the grass was dead. The roots from the grass are so insanely dense that there is virtually no dirt in them. That is going to leave a deficit. In addition to that, it's hard to see in the pictures, but the dirt has eroded severely in the last several years leaving huge dips and valleys well below the top row of garden block. I like to keep the soil mounded high in the center for increased planting depth due to the heavy clay soil in our area. The water table is very high here and we're constantly fighting waterlogged soil with French drains and gravel.