How can you effectively use landscaping fabrics? I know some of you think that landscape fabric is the end-all to your landscaping worries, but what is the logic behind these fabrics? Are they really the key to no-maintenance lawns?

The first thing you need to know is that when you start working on a lawn, you must keep maintaining it. There’s no such thing as no-maintenance lawns. However, a landscape fabric can definitely make your landscaping easier if it has several useful features.

Some landscaping fabrics have a feature called a weed barrier. Not all fabric designs have this feature, but some companies create fabrics that can act as weed barriers. Weeds can grow anywhere, and mostly in areas that you cannot maintain well, like crevices of rocks and other fixtures in your garden. Sometimes, to be able to prevent a weed from reappearing you will need to re-design your garden or re-arrange the heavy rocks you have installed. A landscaping fabric with a weed barrier can save you a lot of trouble.

If you prefer to use decorative rocks for ground cover and path work, you will need to have a separator for the soil and the groundcover. For this purpose, a good quality landscape fabric is ideal. This is to make sure your lawn will not have mud rocks after a sudden rain storm. Some people make-do with newspapers and cardboard boxes, and even old carpets.

If you don’t want to use fabrics, you can simply create a living soil planting area that you can mulch and tend to. But for larger spots, you can use decorative rock. You can use landscaping fabric under mulched living beds and rock beds.

Landscaping fabric can prevent weed outgrowth, but there will always be seeds and dirt that can accumulate on the fabric. This means you will still need to maintain your lawn periodically, and this means cleaning the spots covered by fabric.

Landscaping fabric can be used under bark and mulch covered beds. In the long run, this will make it even easier for you to replace a section of your lawn. You won’t need to use a blower to get rid of dirt. You can maintain whole sections yearly without having to deal with too much dirt.

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