stone beds in a garden/landscape

[kzin]

Hello,

I'm redesigning my front yard. Getting away from grass to try and reduce water consumption. I would like to have some areas filled with river stone. My concern is weeds becoming an maintenance nightmare.

Anyone have any experience with this?

The plan would be to remove the existing grass, lay down that landscape cloth in the bed area, perhaps sprinkle with sand for color and fill with river stone. Are weeds going to be a permanent nightmare in such a setup, or will the landscape cloth do it's job reasonably well? Does one have to replace the landscape cloth every so often?

thanks in advance for your wisdom and experience ml

ps. Thanks to the person that suggested the cargo netting for working on hills. This looks like it might be workable next time if I can figure out how to secure the nets.

[JimR]

The answer depends partially on where you're located. California High Desert, not a problem. Southern Florida - you'll be weeding on a daily/weekly basis, unless you just plan on regular use of Roundup.

Also, you'll probably find that most weeds grow from the surface down (rather than starting below and growing up through the rock fill layer). Expect weeds to grow in the river rock above the weed barrier. My experience with landscape cloth has been that it didn't do a lot of good, and became a real hassle whenever I wanted to change the garden or plant something. I'd skip it as an unnecessary expense and unneeded effort.

[Kevin Cherkauer]

We "inherited" landscaping from the previous owners of our house that was big on gravel and wood chips atop landscape fabric. At least here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, this is an unending nightmare of weeds and hassle. For the first couple years it will be okay, but around here soil formation proceeds surprisingly fast. Organic stuff blows in and decomposes, and before you know it (at most a couple of years), there is enough soil-like matter built up for various weeds to start growing. Each year it seems larger varieties of weeds can gain a foothold than the prior year -- a steady march toward a climate community of redwood forest, no doubt. Wood chips are slightly worse than gravel because they themselves decompose, but even gravel will fill up with organic matter in a few years, and then there is no easy way to get it out. And the landscape fabric, weighed down by tons of gravel or wood chips, itself becomes a pain any time you want to plant something. (I will say this for it -- that stuff seems like it will still be around long after the sun goes red giant and swallows the earth, so you don't have to replace it -- you just have to regret having ever installed it for the rest of your life!)

You're welcome. I don't have a hill so the idea is not from personal experience, but it just seemed like a perfect match. I would imagine you might be able to anchor it enough while you are working by getting some strong ropes and tieing the top corners of the net to some sturdy trees at the top of the hill, if such are available.

Kevin