They messed it up:
they can clean up the mess.

sylvia

ps: I don't know what Preen is, but I wouldn't apply, or allow to be applied, anything that I hadn't researched.

Best luck!

Don't use herbicide. If you have only a few other plants in the bed, cover the grassy area with several sheets of newspaper. Make sure all the area is covered, leaving maybe 3" around the crown of the perennials or the trunk of the shrubs and also the spots where your new perennials will be, wet down the paper, mulch thickly. You'll have to pull the grass from the uncovered areas by hand, but there'll be much less work.

I know a place where you can get free mulch & compost & horse manure/bedding. Please email me.

Good luck. :-)

Preen (active ingredient is Treflan) is a pre-emergent. Does not work on existing grass. I would tell that lame landscaper to get in there with some roundup on a paint brush, and swipe the grass in your beds.

There's a great deal of information in the web about Preen and other pre-emergent herbicides. I'd have that landscaper present a program to see, supported by the fact sheets and MSDS.

This happened to my neighbor, too. She completely covered her beds with sheets and plastic this year!

Yea, the lawn service is not so smart--they did offer to pull it up, but I don't trust them to fix it--they'd end up killing my plants so I'd rather they stay just away (they'd probably use chemical anyway). Much of the grass is away from existing plants--could I smother it with plastic temporarily until I put plants in the bed next week? How long would it take for the grass to die out if I smothered it? If that doesnt' work, I'll try the newspaper trick. Thanks!

I gotta go with Sylvie-

they didn't do the job right, they can clean it up on their time.

however- since they didn't offer, the layered newspaper and mulch works really well :)