Please no! Or at least consider a few of these points before determining to use it. These points are opinions we have formed through our years of doing landscaping and landscape maintenance.
The first question you should ask is if the landscape project you are about to install is final. Is it trees and shrubs, or is it river rock or just mulch etc.? If it is plants and shrubs I would recommend not using it. You're shocked! Right? What about all the weeds?
That's what specialty type of chemicals are designed for. We've worked in a yard that another company installed, quite extensively over the last year. It's literally thousands of square feet of shrub and tree dotted mulch beds. Most of the bed areas have landscape fabric under the mulch. Due to improper installation, some of the trees died. (Another article on planting trees to come later) We went in to tear out the dead and add in a few other things and guess what happened. The landscape fabric got torn up in the process of trying to fix the shrub problem. In a new yard, even at best you can plan on losing one or two shrubs, if there is a great number of them. And, what if you decide you don't like some of the shrubs after a year. Landscape fabric just makes it more difficult to fix the bed back up.
The second question is, what will I gain by using fabric. If you use bark mulch or pine straw, you actually want it to decay from the bottom and feed the roots of your plants. If you put fabric down, there is now a barrier that either root or mulch has to permeate. This will take a few years. Another thing we tend to forget about is the fact that as mulch decomposes, it becomes dirt. As season after season passes, weed seeds will come in on the wind and be distributed in this new fertile dirt. And, they WILL sprout. Basically you're just kicking the ball down the road as far as weed control is concerned. If you're that gardener who likes to play in the dirt, planting and transplanting this stuff isn't a fit for you. Consider using professional chemical or manual weed control, designed for this use, instead.
Now, just so the poor fabric doesn't start feeling like nobody likes it, I can say it's great for the right application. We love to use it under dry river beds to keep the river rock from being stained by red clay. It's actually a great option for putting under most stone applications.
Thanks for reading, and till next time, smart up on the fabric use.
Peyton Johnson
Owner/Operator
Hartscape LLC
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