Hi,
I can't find a place to help me. I have a picture of a bush and don't know where to post it or send it to someone to see if they know what it is.

Is it only along the foundation? The gravel may be essential to the drainage around your house. Before digging it up and replacing, you should check with the city building dept to make sure that removing the gravel will not violate the building code or cause water problems in your basement.

seems to me that if there's that much gravel there, then it was put there intentionally for some reason. i agree with Judy B about finding out the reason behind the gravel before removing it. my yard here in pennsylvania has a ton of "gravel" in it, i believe it is slate that has broken up, and it is EVERYWHERE..it's hard to dig a hole without fishing out thousands and thousands of small pieces of stone. it is mixed in with the clay though, it's not like i just dug down and found nothing but rocks with no dirt mixed in. if you have dug down below the 6 inches of top soil and are finding nothing but gravel, and it doesnt seem like a natural occurance, be very careful about removing it, as there is probably a valid reason it's there. (unless your builder or maybe previous owners before you might have just dumped it and covered it over?)

You might add polysorb material to the top layer of soil to hold in moisture and keep adding organics to develop a well drained topsoil that you can live with

Appreciate the advice..apparently it's a french drain system, so I chose to strip about a foot of gravel out and build up a raised area for the shrubs. That way, it'll still drain well there.