Canadian Gardening: Turning lawn into garden, 1 by spklatt

spklatt wrote:
We have an area of dry clay soil with a pitiful bit of lawn at the front of our house, that I want to turn into an area of shrubs, groundcovers & alpines so we never have to mow it again :-) I'm going for an ecologically-sound solution - probably either covering it with newspaper for several weeks, or turning the sod over & letting it decompose, or both.

Part of this plot is under an Austrian pine, part under a juniper shrub and the rest in the sun. Has anyone converted lawn into garden and have any hard-earned lessons that they wouldn't mind sharing? Anyone have any luck with anything that grows well under pine?

Shannon