I wanted to make a flower bed under an old cherry tree. I was going to use flat stone for the border of the garden and then fill it with some good soil and mulch and add my plants. Now I am thinking this is a bad idea for the tree. I don't want kill it by covering up the roots and am thinking maybe I should just forget this.

There are some old lilac bushes here, which I do not mind, but there are tons of weeds and never ending vines growing through the lilac making it a nasty tangled mess. As you can see I have already started to remove a good portion of the lilac bushes and weeds. I do not believe I ran into any tree roots in this process but I could be wrong. Our soil is sandy so I am not sure if the roots would be deeper in the ground than with clay soil.

The ground goes up to the tree and is not even throughout the area so I would have to add more soil to the left and less as I approached the tree. If I shouldn't do the garden I would like to at least even up the ground, if I can do it without hurting the tree, and plant grass.

Honestly, with all the crap that was growing there I am not sure I can get rid of enough of it to plant grass and not have it poking back up. I don't know what to do with this spot.