Can I Put Lawn Fabric Under the Bricks or Edging Along a Flower Bed?

Landscape fabric can reduce the amount of time you spend weeding.

Landscape fabric can reduce the amount of time you spend weeding.

Keeping weeds and creeping grass out of your flowerbed sometimes feels like a full-time job. Various techniques help reduce weeds, including installing lawn fabric, also called landscape fabric, over the soil in the flowerbed. Some edging doesn't require an additional layer of protection to keep weeds at bay, but others benefit from putting the fabric underneath them.

Fabric-Free Borders

Not every edging material has a problem with weeds popping up in between, and many don't need lawn fabric to keep the grass on the proper side. Bricks mortared into place that are buried at least 2 inches into the ground, for example, don't have gaps that allow grass to spread into the flowerbed or weed seeds to sprout. This is also true of the thin plastic edging you pound into the ground because there's no real surface area that could cause a problem.

Those That Need Some Help

Other types of borders don't hold up as well to the ongoing onslaught from weeds and grasses. Shaped edging, such as concrete pavers with angled sides, have gaps between part of each paver. Even bricks that butt up right next to each other leave just enough space between the bricks to be a problem. Wooden edging can degrade over time, weakening at points such as knot holes or creating cracks that let weeds through.

How the Fabric Helps

It's usually helpful to lay lawn fabric under edging materials that don't need the fabric underneath. The edging might not benefit, but your flowerbed and the fabric will. The fabric edges must be secured somehow, and the border material will do this. When you lay the end of the fabric under your edging, you help hold the landscape fabric in place so the ends don't curl up and allow weed seeds to sprout.

Doing It Right

When you install the landscape fabric, secure it on all sides with landscape staples every 3 feet or so along the edges. To put it under your edging instead of using landscape staples, leave a little bit of extra fabric on that side; many edging materials sink into a trench into the ground, so your landscape fabric should as well. It should be long enough to wrap around the bottom of the edging material. This also helps prevent underground rhizomes from spreading into your flowerbed.

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