never use landscape fabric for anything.. ever ...

i will think about the plant part

ken

Thanks Ken - I'm open to any out of the box ideas you might have. Why don't you like landscape fabric? As a temporary weed prevention, I thought about using natural burlap but don't know how effective it will be. I try to avoid chemicals, etc and would prefer not to use the "fabric." Also concerned about how it will affect the trees. Here's my reasoning - I really don't want to use the fabric but, temporarily ... I was thinking that we could put the fabric between the fence and the trees and then pull it out once the trees get larger. That way, I don't have to spend hours weeding or have to have the lawn company accidentally damage the trees. If there's a good ground cover, that would also give it a chance to spread.

in my world ... round up the weeds ... cover with adequate mulch .. and you are done ...

most weed seed is air borne ... and so is wind blown soil ... as soon as you put down fabric.. stuff is settling on top .. and sooner or later.. the weeds will be growing on top of such ... and be impossible to pull out...

its just a night mare ... trust me.. us... on that ...

mulch should be put down.. heavy enough ... that it settles to two or 3 inches ... the deeper you go... the longer before you have to redo it ... but never right up against a tree ...

ground cover... will take 5 to ten years.. to really get going ... so its not really an immediate solution ...

you could put down your mulch..and then put ground cover into it.. so that... in 3 to 5 years.. when the mulch is decaying.. your ground cover might be doing the job ...

your premise is that you eant to skip the cost and effort to mulch ... and get away with the panacea of ground cover doing it all ... sorry.. we have all had that dream ... lol ..

without a pic ... its hard to get too specific ... but one trick is to have long range goals for beds... but just mulch 2 or 3 feet around your plants... and as they grow.. the mulch moves out with them .. and eventually.. creates the beds ...

gotta run

ken

Good points. I would be interested to hear your ground cover recommendations. Do you have a link for how to download a picture onto Garden Web?

I have to disagree with Ken on this. I think landscape fabric gets a bad reputation, because so many people use the kind that looks like a black trash bag is sticking out of their mulch... It is made even worse, because they do not keep up with added fresh mulch every other year.

I bought brown landscape fabric to cover a 100 ft long mulch bed that runs the length of my yard and has a row of about 12 arbs for a privacy screen. Because this bed borders the "woods", the weeds would encroach into the bed all the time. I do not use chemicals, so the only way I could manage this was by weeding by hand... it got to be too much, so I used the fabric and it has worked awesome. True, some weed seed lands on top, but the roots can't go very deep so it's easy to just hit with the weed wacker and keep it looking clean.

Just make sure you cut rings in the fabric around the trees so water flow to the root ball is not affected.

Now to your questions... ground cover will not slow the growth of the trees. It may however compete for more of the water, so you will need to ensure you are providing adequate water to your trees. You didn't mention how much sun the area gets, but since you have juniper there, I will assume full sun. Here are some options:

Sedum rupestre 'Angelina'

Sedum makinoi 'Limelight'

Sedum reflexum 'Blue Spruce'

Thymus serpyllum 'Elfin'

We would need to refresh the mulch and keep it from looking unsightly. Yes, full sun (Texas) and 200 linear feet to weed... I will check out these ground covers. Time is pretty tight for us too... The less maintenance the happier I would be.