ginnysgirl, There are no magic bullets to keep grass and broadleaf weeds out of ornamental beds, but there are methods you can employ that will help you keep them to a minimum.

For grassy weeds, the best way to remove what currently is in the bed now is just to take a trowel and dig it out. Dig all of out. You cannot pull it because pulling it removes the topgrowth and leaves roots and stolons underground. New grass will begin growing from those stolons in no time at all, so dig all of them out. With the grasses you remove, don't put them on your compost pile if you have them. They will just root in and start growing there. Instead, bag them up and dispose of them in the trash. With bermuda grass I usually have to dig down 4 to 8 inches to get all the stolons out. Understand that bermuda grass can spread via three methods: by seed, by root and by stolon, so to get rid of it long-term, you have to fight it on all three fronts. Once you have dug out all the grass, including the roots and stolons, you can put down a barrier of the type of your choice, and this could be a good quality landscape fabric (woven fabric, not one of the cheap ones with millions of holes punched in it because grass comes up through those holes), cardboard or newspaper laid down 6 to 8 pages thick. Then pile mulch on top of the barrier, and the mulch should be 2-4" deep. You may have weeds and grass sprout beneath the barrier, but the barrier should prevent it from coming through. Landscape fabric, maintained properly, can last for many years. Both cardboard and newsprint decompose and break down, but they do attract earthworms (which eat them) that help improve your soil. You might get weed seeds sprouting in the mulch, but if you pull them as soon as you notice them, they'll never be able to grow long enough to send roots down through the landscape fabric. If you let them grow in the mulch and put down roots through the fabric, you'll have a big mess that is almost impossible to fix. So, for the above methods to work, you have to check your beds regularly and stop and yank out weeds when they appear. The longer you let them grow and get established the harder they are to remove.

With broad-leaved (non-grassy) weeds, the process is much the same. It is very important to dig them out, and not to pull them. As with weedy grasses, broadleaf weeds often break off at the ground level when you tug on them, and then regrow from the root. To get rid of them, dig out all the root, put down a barrier and mulch.

There are various herbicides that can be applied to weeds, but keep in mind that some of them are broad-spectrum and can kill anything they touch, so you must be very careful about using them around desirable plants. You wouldn't want to accidentally kill plants that you wish to keep, and it is very easy to accidentally do that.

There are some over-the-top herbicides that can be sprayed on grassy weeds to kill them in ornamental beds. If you choose to use one of those, read the label very carefully. It ought to list which ornamental plants can survive being sprayed with this product. If your ornamental plants are not specifically listed on their label or website, you shouldn't use them because they'll kill desirable plants as well as the undesirable ones.

There also are some pre-emergent herbicides that can prevent weeds from sprouting in bare soil. With these, you must time their application very careful as they have a limited life in the soil and must be applied to the soil shortly before the target weed seeds would begin to sprout. You would have to apply them in late summer/early fall to prevent cool-season weeds from sprouting (the exact timing depends on your exact location and when the cool-season weeds tend to sprout there) and then apply them in late winter/early spring before warm-season seeds begin to sprout.

Honestly? Seeds will sprout in every single square inch of bare ground they find, so heavy mulching is the best deterrent. Second to that? An active, involved gardener who takes time weekly to dig out weeds that have sprouted. There's no easy way to keep plants out but the above two methods work for me. I generally don't use herbicides because most of the effective ones are synthetic in origin and I prefer to garden organically. The few organic pre-emergents that exist are not very effective and are not effective for a very long period of time, so I don't even bother with them. Post-emergent synthetic herbicides work well, as long as you carefully match the specific synthetic post-emergent with the type of weed you're trying to kill--whether broadleaf or grassy. There also are some broad-spectrum products that have active ingredients that kill both broad-leaf and grassy weeds, but remember they will kill everything, including your lawn and desirable trees, shrubs, groundcovers, vines, flowers, etc. Herbicide drift, and the accidental killing of desirable plants, is a huge problem in this country. Always use herbicides exactly as the label directs, and take as much care as possible not to overspray or not to use them on a windy day. The last thing you want is for your herbicide to drift through the air and kill plants belonging to other people. Herbicides, under the right conditions, can drift and easily kill plants 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. Under some conditions, they may drift a mile and kill plants. That is why you must be careful with them.

I hope this helps.

Dawn