Landscape Fabric: A Hard No

By a gardener with dirty knees and a strong opinion

Somewhere beneath your mulch, under the hopeful hostas and ornamental grasses, a quiet war is being waged. It’s the kind of battle that unfolds slowly, like the cracking of a stone under centuries of freeze and thaw. It's the story of roots meeting resistance, of earthworms giving up the ghost, of soil sealed off from sky. This is the slow death that begins with landscape fabric.

Let me say this plainly: landscape fabric sucks.

I know that’s not polite language for a gardening column, but politeness isn't helping our gardens breathe. Every spring, I see it again—plastic netting or weed barrier sheets sold with cheerful promises: weed-free beds! less work! tidy edges! But nature doesn’t do tidy. And she certainly doesn’t like to be smothered.

Landscape fabric is the gardening equivalent of putting a rug over a hardwood floor and pretending you’ve sanded it. Beneath that fabric, the soil dies a little. Microorganisms dwindle. Mycorrhizal fungi, those secret networks that help plants share nutrients like neighbors passing sugar across the fence, can’t reach each other anymore. It’s like plastic wrap over your mouth—you can’t shout or sing or sigh. You can only sweat.

And here’s the cruel joke: weeds still grow. Oh yes. They come with time and dust and wind and the persistence of life. Seeds blow in and settle atop your mulch, rooting above the fabric. Or worse, they muscle in from beneath, their roots twisting and buckling the barrier like a tree lifting sidewalk. Only now, when you try to pull them, you can't. They're anchored in a layer you can’t reach without a knife and a tantrum.

I've spent too many afternoons pulling landscape fabric out like an archaeologist unearthing a bad decision. I’ve found it buried under layers of gravel and bark, wrapped tight around the feet of unhappy shrubs. I’ve watched water bead and run off it, rather than soaking into the soil like rain should. And I’ve whispered quiet apologies to the earthworms who fled the scene.

If you want a real solution to weeds, try what the soil has always known: organic micromulch, deep enough to block light, loose enough to let life breathe. Plant densely. Encourage groundcovers. Pull the intruders when they're young, and greet them not with fear, but with curiosity. (What is that plant trying to tell you about your soil?)

Gardens aren't meant to be perfect. They’re meant to grow, to evolve, to reflect the tenacity of life. They are not supposed to be wallpapered in plastic and pinned down like a crime scene. If we want gardens that feed pollinators, sing with birdsong, and give us more than a weekend chore, we have to treat the soil like the living being it is.

So do me, and the wider ecosystem, a favor: next time you see a roll of landscape fabric at the garden center, walk past it. Give it a wide berth like it’s a snake in the grass. Because under your feet, the earth is asking not for armor, but for air and love.

With deep sincerity,

Molly

Choose life, not soil death.