I am lucky in that my dogs don't dig. The house is a small frame, pier and beam. It faces north, and has a Model T driveway on the east wall with a detached garage behind it. The entire back area is split in half, with the east side having the garage and a section of chain link, a carport, and a narrow side strip between garage and neighbor, all of which is inaccessible to the dogs. In the dogs' domain to the west, the garage/inner chain link forms one side of the section, the house another, and a privacy fence forms the remaining two sides. (The tiny size of the area is part of why I have small dogs--small, um, "leavings"
) As long as I keep their main "run the fence to bark at the cats, possums, and squirrels" lanes clear, the plants should be safe from the dogs.
They like hiding in the Nandina and screeching at the cats that come through between my fence and the neighbor's. The fence is actually almost two feet inward from the property line because the previous owners apparently chose to not remove the trees already in place. It angles in from the end of the Nandina on the right up to where it meets the SW corner of the house. That left a gap between my fence and the neighbor's fence which is perfect for cats and other non-human critters to transit from the alley to the front. The trees will become a problem at some point when they get too big, but I will worry about that when the time comes.
I can put a line of daylilies down the garage wall and wrap around the next 10-15 feet along the back fence. Had an unused new door frame which was the perfect width to lay out as the end of the bed area. The area up against the house has been sectioned off with landscape timbers since I've owned the house. So those two places are where the daylilies are going. In summer, the garage side gets sun from about 11:00 to about 5:00. The other side gets sun from about 8:00 to about 2:00. Be interesting to see which varieties do better with the different sun zones.
