calling all green thumbs

Mine is brown. I'm trying though, as we have a good yard though it's rather bare and minimal, so I'd like to make it pretty.

I've done a little planting in the past week, and today came home with some pots of colorful flowers for our big front porch.
I also bought a box of that ready to spread seed of White Alyssum for in front of our porch. Now this is where I need your help... we have six of these bushes (don't look too closely, they are in desperate need of a trim! and lots of weeds!!), three on each side, across the front of our porch. They are cute and easy, but rather boring just sitting there nicely spaced out in front of the concrete porch surrounded by wood chips. My question is, to plant the alyssum, what do I do about all those wood chips? Do I need to take it all out of there and till up the soil (assuming there's soil under there, haha!) to plant anything? Can I work around the wood chips? If I have to clear most of it out of there, can I put it back after the seed is spread? Would the alyssum grow up through the wood chips? Or should I keep it soil?
These might be silly questions, but really... I'm clueless when it comes to plants and landscaping. HELP!!