I don't like landscape fabric, personally, unless you want to lay it down for a season to kill the weeds and then pull it all up.

Cardboard or layers of newspaper make a nice block for annual weeds and softer perennials; you can mulch right over it, it's free, it degrades on its own, and it's easy to shape it around your perennials to give them room to spread. Heavy perennial weeds and weedy shrubs will come right up throught the paper and need to be controlled some other way.

Good luck!

I'm not a big fan of landscape fabric either but I am a fan of your surname. Send me an email if you want to check if we are related.

I've left my weeds in place. I'm on a miniscule budget so I understand there. I use the weeds as my errosion control until such time as I can replace them with the plants I want. Mostly I've gotten them by seed trading and growing my own.

When I get a plant I clear the space where I will plant it and around it enough that the weeds won't sneak back in and get the plant. Then I put up a rock edging around the space so I know where to weed and where not to. I put the plant in and there is a space that I have reclaimed from the wild lol. Needless to say my garden plan extends over ten years because this is not the fast way to get anything done. But I'm a slow and steady wins the race, kind of person.

Since the purpose of weed barrier is to stop things from growing through it I'm not sure it would be the best way to go if you want to naturalize with your plants. Good sized rocks with pockets of dirt behind them would work or a tier system. Either way would let you amend the soil without loosing it when the rains come. Retaining walls are another way to go but expensive and they need to be done right or the soil will push them over with time.

I agree with the first poster. I have clay and lots of weeds and digging is almost impossiblae as it goes from muck to concrete with no in between. I have had grea success with layers of newspaper (10 -16) covered with soil and mulch, or I do lasagna gardening. I did use landscape fabric in one place because I was out of newspaper and time and I've regreted it ever since. It's always a problem. Don't do it.

I also use tkhooper's method. That way there is always something there to prevent erosion. Northwoodswis