Oh you must try Lasagna gardening. Yes there is a book out and yes there are websites. It starts by laying piles of wet newspaper on the grass to smother it.Good Luck!
Loving Lazy Lasagna!

Also think about the shape and placement of the beds. Designers say it is more pleasing to the eye to have curving beds then squared off beds. There are books at HD and the library to give you ideas for the design. You can take a garden hose and use it to see if you like the shape of the bed. We usually then edge the line, use the weed whacker and scalp the grass and then use the lasagna method. If I am in a hurry to plant, I dig out spots for the plants. Ricky has said he seldom digs a hole to plant, he now just puts the plant on the ground and dumps soil on top of it and mulches. ;o)

i'm a big mulch gardener, and like ricky, i've basically stopped digging holes.

now's the time to start! all over my neighborhood are conveniently bagged oak leaves, waiting to be dumped upon newspaper and cardboard.

a couple of things if you go this route:
1) it takes A LOT OF NEWSPAPERS. way more than you'd think. a minimum of 3 layers, five is better. overlap them at least 4 inches.
2) water the ground thoroughly before you begin
3) layers are great -- green brown green brown. but i often just do brown, with a liberal scoop of cottonseed meal to get things going.
4) cardboard for areas that you won't be planting in for a while, or areas that you want to be low maintenance. the cardboard can block water, so be careful (tho the whole blocking water is a good thing if you want a low maintenance, just-mulch bed)
5) if you want a more homogenized look, get a few bales of pine straw and strew it on top. but i'm satisfied with just brown leaves and/or tree trimmings from the utility co (i've grown really fond of utility cuttings, since they have lot of young branches and leaves, which is great material)
6) consider running an emitter spray irrigation system beneath the mulch. easier when you're just getting started. i love these systems (available from the bigbox stores).
7) if you have a LOT of leaves, consider mulching with your lawnmower. it'll speed things up a lot.

While the newspapers are a good idea, if you want to start planting in 24 hours, use RoundUp.

Step 1 - Get a can of orange spray paint and outline the beds. No straight lines anywhere!

Step 2 - Mix the RoundUp in a large pump sprayer and put enough blue food dye in so that you can see where you sprayed already.

Step 3 - The next day you can start building your beds. Raise them up with fresh topsoil right on top of the grass. Don't worry, even though it's still green, it's dying.

As Kathy said, I've stopped digging holes. I put a plant on the surface after scraping away the mulch and just build up around it. This way the overall height of the garden continues to grow.

I have made many instant beds (done in an hour) using newspapers and bagged soil from big box stores. The only holes I dig nowadays are for small trees with deeper root structures.

I know that Round-up isn't the same as pesticide but I just choose not to use it in my garden. It isn't necessary to kill the grass that is under the newspaper. It will die an natural death anyway and add compost to the soil. (Maybe I'm too cheap to use Roundup. :-))

Worms seem to find their way into the instant beds within a very short time.

Of course then mulch the beds well. It not only looks professional but keeps the moisture in for your new plants.

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After 3 months or less (can't remember)
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After a year
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I could not make curvy beds (which I admire) because this bed is between my neighbors and my house and I have very little room to work between the bed and the grass path.
Since this photo was taken I have added taller stuff (bamboo and others) to make a better visual block between the houses. It's a continual work in progress.

BTW you don't need the edging stuff I put down. I thought I did when I started but it's not necessary. I bought a foot-edger so I can keep the St. Augustine grass from creeping back in the beds.

Denise

Very cool. :-)

Thanks for the pics fawnridge. It helps to have a visual. I spent some time last night investigating online but your pics really spelled it out for me.

I have a couple of questions... don't I always? *grin*

Can you use the lasagna method for long term plantings like hedges? Also, what about roses? I've been looking at this page - http://www.centralfloridarosesociety.com/easy/index.asp - for easy care roses and I was wondering about doing a rose hedge on the eastern side of the property.

I also wondered about the edging for the bed... how does the grass not creep in?

What a great thread! Thanks for starting it strawberrygirlie!
Next month I'm going to tackle some grass elimination and now that I know about the lasagna method-I know what to do besides killing my back by manually ripping the roots from the ground.
Thanks Denise for the photos. Definitely the route to take. I've been recycling all my newspapers for years...now I can take the organic route so to speak and save my back in the process!
Sue.

The more I read about this the more excited I get! I think it will solve a lot of my issues too. I never thought about it before but now that I have I'll be looking more closely at the raised beds in my neighborhood. :-)

yes, you can use this method for roses, shrubs, trees... anything. keep in mind that a raised bed will dry out faster than a ground-level one, which makes mulching all the more important. there's only one way to know when to water -- stick your finger in as deep as it goes...

i keep my 'volunteer' lawn in the back & my augie in front in line with a weedwhacker that i've removed the guard from. if you do it right, you can clear a 4 or 5 inch band around the bed -- right down to the 'earth'. then i kick a little mulch into the band. over time, the beds grow a bit, but you can just kick the mulch back into whatever shape.

if you choose to go the whacker route SPEND GOOD MONEY ON YOUR WHACKER. i had an onld, cheapo model. then i got my new one... it's so light and powerful! i kiss it sometimes, i love it so...

if you're not in a hurry, let me suggest strongly that you sow some rye grass in the future bed. let it grow high, cut it down, let it grow again, cut it down... THEN start your lasagna bed. i did this for a couple small beds last year, and it worked great. rye's a great green manure. this summer, i used cowpeas for the same purpose... successive planting all summer long, picked beans all summer, then mowed them down, covered it with oak leaves, & planted strawberries. green manures are great!@

Oh, here's another "learned the hard way" tip. If you have underground irrigation you need to mark those heads BEFORE you put your newspaper down.

Yes I have covered up the heads and then had to dig them out again. If you look closely in the second photo you will see little blue flags marking where the buried heads are. What a pain in the neck. And yes I've made the mistake more than once because months go by and I forget. Then after digging them out I had to get height extenders to get them higher than the new bed.

Learn from my (many) mistakes. I haven't done it myself (not strong enough?) but when guys were digging out some areca palms they severed the pvc irrigation pipe. That'll run the water bill up pretty fast.

What about using this newspaper and mulch system under an oak tree? Would that be ok to do? It won't hurt the tree?
Thanks Brenda

...mow it low or leave as is. Cover with cardboard like previously mentioned, pile it 6 inches deep with leaves, straw, hay (about 7$ for a bale of the cheap stuff), buy a bale of alfalfa (about 14$ for a 60 # cube) The last layer should be the leaves, hay or pine straw. You can stop at a horse farm and get all the predigested hay and alfalfa you need for free too. Poke holes in the c'board with a pitch fork...not totally necessary, but speeds up the process. Stop at a bait store and buy a container or two of worms. Keep moist and in a couple of months you're ready. Various methods work and lots of info available on the compost forum...Z