First some background. I'm a beginner gardener and took on a project of developing a side of our property that's been long neglected. It's about 20ft by 45 ft. The short side is bordered on one side by our house, and 20ft out is a treeline consisting of a willow at each end, 2 pines and a hemlock. Immediately after the tree line is a creek, then a street.
I just finished clearing out decades worth of pine needles, willow leaves, weeds and other tree debris and started planting. I haven't planted much yet, the ground is very rooty, but what I have planted seems to be doing ok, e.g. a month or so ago I planted a Japanese Golden Forest Grass plant and kept an eye on it, it seems to be doing ok. Other plants are an Autumn Fern, and Upside Down Fern, and a Sweetbox. My intent is to make this a woodland garden.
Question #1 is regarding a weed with 5 purple petals that is invasive, but fortunately seems to have shallow roots so it's easy to pull out and therefore relatively easy to control. It has a "weedy" smell to it when it's disturbed. I'm just curious as to what it is, because it's actually not bad looking (for a weed), but I don't want it around.
Question #2 is how to get rid of probably hundreds of small holly plants. It's both addicting and at the same time discouraging (more the latter) to try to pull them all out by hand. I've probably pulled about a couple hundred already, but there's many more to go. I don't want to use chemicals because it's next to a creek and the powers that be (Lake Forest Park, WA) frown on that, and I do too. I want to put in Alpine Creeper as a ground cover and am wondering if that would be a mistake, or should I just go ahead and plant them and deal with the holly plants as they crop up (but they can be hard to pull out, even the small ones).
