slightly raise beds, like a mound, plant the perennial plants on the top where there is a deeper amount of soil and annuals around the bottom of the mound. Just a suggestion. On the septic bed it self, you'll know if you have a problem if there are spots that never dry up. You might want to check with the previous owner if possible. Thank you. I appreciate all your good advice. Why do I feel like such a fish out of water? I really know nothing about gardening. Why, just the other day I wanted to pull out a bush that just looked like a big bushy weed. Good thing I didn't because it turned out to be the most wonderfully scented phlox with big white clumps of flowers resembling hydrangea. Like I said, I don't have a clue. I came to gardening fairly late, in my mid-thirties. There was no internet then, so I began by reading books -- which at the time were almost always written by British garden authorities and filled with lovely pictures of plants that wouldn't grow very well for me in Virginia, as I discovered only after considerable trouble and expense. The first really practical book I found to help guide my thinking as a budding gardener was probably The American Weekend Gardener by Pamela Thorpe, a New Yorker whose country garden was somewhere in upstate New York -- probably not too different from your own growing conditions -- and as I recall,