Robert brought in a couple of yards of topsoil and compost and rototilled that in to the soil under the tree. The cedar tree does not seem to have suffered for having its top layer of roots damaged. It is healthy and growing at a rather alarming rate. The next step is the plant selection. The cedar tree complicates the issue in that it provides quite a bit of shade, and I wanted a garden that looked like a cottage garden.
Cottage gardens are traditionally sun gardens.
Those conditions and my requirement of riotous color made plant selection very important. They had to be plants that like hot, dry shade and acid conditions. Most plants prefer a slightly acid soil, so that was less of a problem than I feared. And because of our skirting the tree, I was able to ignore that shade restriction around the edge of the garden. Soon, I will have a plant list, but along with cyclamen, fushias, and ferns, I have roses and bearded iris growing under that tree.