The wood chips will continue to break down and improve the texture of the soil under the landscape fabric. Is the weed mat not staying down at the edges? He should have used some pins to hold it down for you.

Since the wood chips are sitting on top of an old weed mat, they will not add much to the soil below. But that is a good thing since you don't want to enrich the soil - it only grows weeds.

The landscaper was lazy. Instead of cleaning the site first, he just added more stuff to a problem.

Now that it is done I would leave it as is. The wood will break down over time. Since you have stone on a weed mat, you will eventually need to remove the whole thing anyway. Weeds will continue to grow between the stones. Unless they used a lot of stones (ie thick layer, say 3" +), you will start to see the weed mat where the stones move and will hate seeing it. So you'll remove it.

Moving from a wood mulch to a stone mulch because of weeds is a little like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. As Madtripper pointed out, weeds will continue to grow between the stones much as they did in the previous mulch. The main difference is that wood chips are much more easier to manipulate while weeding, whereas stone is a little more difficult. (This can vary on the size and type of stone used, too).

- Audric

Hi,
The landscaper should have removed the mulch and the old weed barrier. If you spray down your stone about once a year it will help keep the weeds down, because the weeds actually sprout in the soil and dust that settles in your stone. You may have to replenish your stone every once in awhile, a bag here or there, but if it was sprend to a 2" thickness you shouldn't have too much trouble. You don't want to remove the weed barrier with stone, because the stone will sink into your soil without it.

Brat

"spraying stones keeps weeds down?"

Not if you use water???