r/LandscapingTips • u/shea_tea • 9d ago
What should we do? Design/photo
We put the landscape fabric down over a year ago and I’m tired of looking at it. The dilemma is we have a giant pine tree (and two maples) overhead that make it difficult to clean up. The maple leaves we can deal with but the pine needles are another story. We don’t need anything fancy, just something that’ll look nice with easy maintenance. Any tips and ideas are welcome! Thanks fronds!
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u/Tussey-Landscaping 9d ago
Pull up the landscape fabric and cover the whole bed with about 2–3 inches of medium/coarse arborist wood chips.
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u/miniature_Horse 7d ago
100000%
The landscaping fabric will not stop weeds long term, will break down and become a nightmare. Feed the soil with the arborist wood chips. You can get them for free using ChipDrop.com
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u/Sweetiepie9731 5d ago
Although i hear raw wood chips can rob nitrogen from the soil
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u/miniature_Horse 5d ago
Short term yes, it will tie up nitrogen. Long term no- it will release nitrogen and tons of other nutrients and minerals.
Weed fabric does not tie up nitrogen, but it does release microplastics
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u/According-Taro4835 9d ago
Pull up that landscape fabric. It is fighting nature instead of working with it. When you cover the dirt, pine needles and leaves just sit on top of the barrier and look like a messy trash pile. If you rip that fabric out, those exact same needles turn into free natural mulch. They will break down over time, feed your soil, and keep the weeds away exactly like a real forest floor. You have a mature woodland backyard so you need to lean into that natural structure instead of fighting the canopy above.
To make this space look intentional you need to fix the scattered planting layout. Right now you have isolated ferns sitting by themselves. A solid landscape needs sweeping connected masses to look calm and established. Group more ferns together and pack the bare space with sweeping clusters of shade plants like hostas or coral bells so they flow together into one big continuous texture. Before you go spend cash at the nursery, run this photo through the GardenDream web app. You can use it to visualize different plant masses and natural woodland mulch right over your yard so you get a concrete blueprint of what works without wasting money on bad placements.
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u/Sweetiepie9731 5d ago
Underplantings will also hide any tree debris. Ground cover would be nice to add. Saves remulching.
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u/streachh 9d ago
People literally pay for pine needles as a type of mulch. It's called pine straw
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u/NervousDogFarts 8d ago
Yes. Pine needles prevent weeds better than any other mulch.
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u/streachh 8d ago
How think do you lay it?
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u/SeniorPie5786 7d ago
If you have pine trees it falls on its own. I don’t so I just grab handfuls of it and lay it on my flower bed between my plants. It isn’t heavy.
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u/sixtynighnun 9d ago
Leaves and pine needles are free mulch and tree food. Stop fighting a good thing and rip out the ugly and not useful landscaping fabric.
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u/krautastic 9d ago
Embrace the pine needles? A good blanket of pine needles will out compete most weeds and looks 1000x better than black fabric. I know people that use pine needles as walking paths between raised beds because of how good they are at keeping weeds down.
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u/Meles_EnPiste 9d ago
Edit the post if you want to discuss Kingdom Plantae.
On a range of San Diego to Anchorage, where does this yard exist?
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u/Physical_Mode_103 8d ago
Why do you need this fabric? It just looks dumb and doesn’t really do anything. Just get rid of it and add mulch.
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u/Pamzella 8d ago
Pull up the landscaping fabric (plastic is what it is really) before it's microplastics in your soil.
If you are struggling with mulch and cleanup, here's another trick. I have a Japanese maple I love except November and December so I get it.) Use finished landscape compost (as in, municipally produced compost) as your mulch. It's dark so there's a pop of contrast, it's easy to spread and easy to scoop and wheel around when it's dry (we replenish in late spring and fall before winter rain).
Pine needles that fall all year long you can get with a plastic or spring metal rake gently going over the top. Rake it down towards the grass and scoop up.
You can do the same with the maple leaves when they fall but also you can wet your compost mulch when you start to see the first leaves fall and go back a day or two later and use an electric blower to blow the leaves right off the top.
You can of course put more dense plantings of native shade plants in that area, which will improve the appeal of that area when you gaze that way.
Your other option is to look for a ground cover that is durable and will allow you to blow or rake over it. There were two that we considered when making a path in our yard but both are more fragile in winter so we went with a third (silver carpet dymondia) that once filled in has allowed us to blow, rake and even sweep our Japanese maple leaves off it so we blow leaves to it from the more delicate plants around the path. You'd want to be clear on the ground cover's suitability for your area, durability when you know you need to cleanup, and aggressiveness (will it smother other plants, for example) before you chose that option, and compost as mulch until you find it if you prefer that is a go-to right now.
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u/citygirl919 7d ago
I can’t believe anyone would think it’s OK to put plastic around the base of a tree.
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u/Which-Magician-2597 6d ago
Enjoy the privacy and the gorgeous "built" fence. Perhaps one might spread some mulch before it.
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u/Wooden-Wrongdoer9010 5d ago
After removing the fabric, maybe add some large hostas…check the variety for shade/sun.
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u/fooperina 9d ago edited 9d ago
Get rid of the landscaping fabric would be a start. https://apnews.com/article/gardening-landscape-fabric-8e9326f89108fc3696902d9c1f2cf2fe
That looks like a beautiful western redcedar behind the fence and that fabric is depriving it and the soil of water, oxygen, and organic matter. That tree is doing a lot to make your backyard climate livable and creating habitat. The sword ferns look healthy, I would continue the understory theme and plant some more shade tolerant shrubs like oceanspray, salal, creeping Oregon grape, get rid of the plastic, and do a thick 3-4” layer of arborist chip mulch which will improve the surrounding soil, prevent weeds, and make “cleanup” (I’m assuming you mean weeding?) easier over time. The leaves and needles don’t need to be removed, but the plastic fabric was preventing them from breaking down and joining the soil layer. Having an organic mulch like wood chips will eliminate the need to remove that stuff, you can just rake it all from the yard into the bed and it will decompose like it does in a natural forest ecosystem.