Generally speaking, after three years weeds usually grow through landscape fabric making them even harder to remove.

tj

It would depend on your definition of a rock garden. If you really want to grow alpine plants,then a landscape cloth is never used. It is contradictory and potentially harmful to plants that need good air circulation at the crown as well as good drainage for their roots.

On the other hand, there are easy alpine type plants (like sedums and Hen and chicks) that can grow just about anywhere. They can tolerate landscape cloth.

This post was edited by leftwood on Wed, Dec 19, 12 at 22:44

Thanks to both of you. I decided I'll not use the cloth since it is easy to pull weeds from the sand. I'm putting in a variety of sedums, hens and chicks, aloes, cactus, ice plants, etc. i originally thought I'd do s small garden but my plans have grown to about 25 feet long :)