You'll have to do what I'm doing. Put down a heavy layer of mulch, no newspaper, and wait for the plants to emerge through the mulch. You'll be better able to tell whats a weed and whats a plant with the mulch. It will help supress the weeds too, without harming the plants.

If you aren't concerned about plants that reseed themselves, you could put down a pre-emergent like Preen on top of your mulch to help keep the weeds at bay too, without harming the established plants. It will also keep any weed seeds that blow in on top of your mulch from germinating.

I'm in the same boat, but my manicured beds and landscaped areas add up to about two full acres in square footage, so I'm really overwhelmed! I researched all of my options thoroughly and finally decided that mulch was the only way to go. I weeded first, sprayed anything that remained, mulched over everything and spread Preen on top. Now I just have to wait for the flowers to pop up and remove any weeds that appear as well. Good luck!

OK, let me get this correctly. You mulched heavily, sprayed anything that remained, then put Preen on top. Since the green things you sprayed were probably flowers and the mulch can keep plants from coming up? Any of the flowers that put out seed will have their seed prevented from coming up. Where do you think the flowers are going to pop up from? From what was written sounds to me very few if anything will come up.

Better to have given the advice to get a book on weeds and/or a book on garden plants so that the original poster can find out which plants are which.

Unless you have clearly defined marked plants it would be better to wait until your plants start growing before adding the mulch etc. Pulling a few weeds will prevent the heartbreak of finding out that you pulled the plants you were expecting and left the weeds. It sounds funny but even experienced gardeners will destroy things that had been on their wishlists because they don't recognize them.

Tulips and some of the iris's may be emerging. Start doing a patrol to see the new things that are emerging. If you don't know what they are introduce yourself to a neighbor to see if they know. Hosta's will be later and depending on the type of lily they could emerge any time from now until July. Not all things come up at once. Enjoy your new place, try to keep the weeds down once you find out which is which. If you are lucky the previous owners will have planted some of the spring flowers such as Jack n Pulpit that come up then disappear when it gets warmer.