What can you plant in very rocky soil and will it survive?

I bought a house and want to do some landscaping in the front. I discovered that the previous owner had white stones (the small,decorative, white kind) covering the whole bed but he had covered them with landscaping paper and then added dirt and mulch. All the soil has these white rocks mixed in with the dirt. It would be crazy to try to remove them all. Do you think i can just dig a whole deep enough and plant things beyond the stone layer and does this make them less likely to survive. I was looking at putting small shrubs, small trees and hostas in there.