Professional gardener Jessica Damiano had some choice words on landscaping fabric in an article published by the Associated Press.
Basically, it's bad. The fabric is ineffective at its primary purpose of stopping weeds, as they'll just seed on top of the fabric. Once they settle in, roots will dig through the fabric, making them difficult to remove later.
"When your landscape fabric becomes a torn, weedy, root-tangled mess — and it will — good luck removing it," she said. "The painstaking process involves slowly and carefully pulling up individual fragments of the fabric, which will be heavy under the soil, and cutting them away from around and between roots, which will have grown above, below, and through the textile."
In the meantime, the barrier prevents the efficient transfer of oxygen and water to deeper soil, depriving plants of vital resources.
Damiano also mentioned that landscaping fabric creates heat pockets, which prevent self-seeding. Worse still, deteriorating landscaping fabric sheds particles into the soil. Microplastics accumulate in food sources and, once ingested, introduce endocrine, immune, circulatory, digestive, renal, and reproductive health risks.
The only exception Damiano provided for landscaping fabric was beneath pavers or gravel.
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All-natural weed control is a viable alternative to landscaping fabric. For example, Damiano suggested sheets of cardboard if a section of a garden needs to be fully suffocated and built up from scratch. Other gardeners are also big fans of using cardboard as a base for new beds.
Damiano said shredded bark, wood chips, and straw make great mulches. They retain moisture in soil, provide nutrients to plants as they break down, and regulate soil temperatures. What few weeds pop up can be easily pulled by hand.
Damiano summed up her opinions on landscaping fabric plainly.
"It's widely misused in most home landscape applications, where it does more harm than good in ornamental beds and around perennials and crops," she wrote.
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