Absolutely! It’s called Five Digits. Safe even for your kids. Get them

involved now!

I don't believe there is such an animal. When a bed is overrun with weeds, usually the best solution is complete resetting of the bed. Remove all of the good plants or enough starts of them to carry the bed forward. (This usually involves cutting them back.) Heel them in somewhere. Dig, use glyphosate, or a combination of both on the weeds in the bed. If glyphosate, it will be at least a week before you can reinstall the good plants. When it is weed free, reinstall them, and know full well that the bed is full of weed seeds or possibly some root pieces and they will be trying to make their return without haste. Therefore, be vigilant for a good period of time to make sure that they don't start up again. I'd recommend Preen on a calendar schedule for at least a couple of years in order to help with the vigilance.

Unfortunately, no. Herbicides come in two forms; targeted - affecting either broadleaved (dicots) weeds OR grass-type plants (moocots) - and broad spectrum - those that will kill any type of plant. And none of them are able to differentiate between a weed and a desirable plant.

You could use a broadeaved weed killer around the ornamental grasses if things like dandelions, thistles, chickweed, creeping Charlie are an issue. Those are broadleaved weeds and a targeted herbicide - like Weed B Gon - will work on them. But be very careful if using around other perennials as most of them are broadleaved plants as well. Conversely, you can use a grass targeted herbicide (Grass B Gon) on the perennials to rid them of any grassy weeds but again, have to be very careful to avoid any ornamental grasses in the immediate vicinity.

Any grass type weeds growing up in the ornamental grasses will need to be addressed by hand (live_wire_oak's Five Digits). They will not be affected by the broadleaved weed killer and the grass weed killer could kill or severely damage the OG's as well.

"The plants fail to thrive and chronic use of the stuff [Preen} will eventually kill them." Christopher, that a nice scare story but I do not accept your assessment. And your evidence is anecdotal, not a scientific study. Therefore, it's much more easily subject to wrong interpretation. Preen like other garden chemicals breaks down from sunlight and microbial action. It does not persist in the soil. Initially, it's killing zone is within a thin layer at the soil surface -- where most of the germinating seeds are located. It doesn't even kill germinating seeds that somehow get a little deeper, like what morning glories always seem to do. I've never seen any sign of it affecting any existing plant. Since my mom's yard is 100% bed and I don't have the time or interest to be endlessly weeding, the whole yard gets it. Nothing has any trouble growing or suffers from herbicide damage. Before I started using it on the yard, weeds were getting out of control. I could fill a five-gallon bucket with them every two weeks. In the same time now, I'm lucky to find enough to fill a quart container.

Yardvaark you have been in the business long enough to understand that the majority of home owners never follow the manufacturer's directions for chemical use. More is always better. IPM is not a concept they understand or follow. Toxic herbicides and pesticides are just that. Toxic.

But blaming a product for misuse is an unfair assessment of it. We have to assess it according to its use as specified by the manufacturer. We couldn't blame Julia Child for a bad recipe if someone quadrupled the salt portion.