Works great for a few years but decomposes leaving the bare ground again. Using landscape cloth (purchased a garden centers) is the best choice but costlier.

I'm not much on landscape cloth. I actually prefer cardboard or newspaper (they're organic and will return to the soil.) Here's what I do:
1. I lay out the pattern for my bed. For this I use a hose to outline the edges (only because I don't like straight lines) and then spray the outline with talcum powder.
2. I lay the newspaper or cardboard out covering the shape of the bed.(If it's windy, you might want to spray the paper or cardboard down, or weigh it down with soil ro rocks).
3. I cover the entire bed with leaf mold (that's mulched leaves straight out of my compost bin). In just a couple of months, I've got nice, rich soil full of beneficial microbes and macroorganisms, the newspaper or cardboard has decomposed into the soil and my plants are happy.
I've made all my beds like this. Once the bed is established, I generally line it with stone to delineate the garden beds with the paths.
Don't worry about the ink in newspapers (or cardboard for that matter). All newspaper inks used in the U.S. are soy-based and disintegrate rapidly into the soil.
I wouldn't use newspaper magazine sections that are coated, mainly because these take much longer to disintegrate, and the coatings may not be something you want to put into your landscape.

Here is a link that might be useful: Desert and Waterwise Gardens