Weddingbee boards

Hey ladies! Me and DH bought a brand new house 2 years ago. When we bought it it looked like this:

We have been tinkering around with the landscaping, and have planted  a row of emerald cedars on each side of the house. We are going to finish off the front yard this year, and are looking at placing a boulder, and a shrub, and some low-lyng ground cover, before we put down a bed of 1/2 inch limestone gravel as the ground cover. I did a quick mockup of how it should look:

And this is what the grey gravel should look like:

So ... I think I am pretty happy with it, we are going drip irrigation throughout the yard, so other than some minor pruning, it should be really low maintenance, but what do you guys think of it?

Make sure you lay down the plastic stuff before the gravel so that weeds don't grow through!

@cvbee: We would use mulch, but where we are is so dry and hot it can be a bit of a fire hazard, as well, if you have pets the mulch can grow fungus and be harmful to any animals sniffing around it!

@JoJo Bananas: Yep, we are all over the landscape barrier, we have about a half dozen rolls in our garage waiting to be used (we are doing the backyard with xeriscaping as well).