3 Uses for Landscape Fabric

Landscape fabric is an essential tool in any gardener or landscaper’s arsenal. It helps to stabilise soil, saves on mulch, helps filtration, retains moisture, and prevents weeds from growing. For such a cheap tool, it’s surprisingly multi-functional and can help you make a huge difference to the quality and layout of your garden.

Chemical-Free Weed Prevention

One of the most common and widely-known uses for landscape fabric is weed prevention – rather than using chemicals that could harm other plants or pets, landscape fabric can simply prevent weeds from growing in the area by starving them of light. This is perfect for anything from planters to borders and even under patios or decking. Fabric works better than plastic sheeting, which is sometimes used, since plastic suffocates the soil – while fabric prevents weed growth, it doesn’t harm living organisms in the soil.

Moisture Retention and Conservation

Landscape fabric allows water through, but prevents it from evaporating from the surface quickly. This is perfect for the summer months and especially during periods where there might be a hosepipe ban and you need to make the most of any water that your garden gets. You can even add mulch under the fabric to improve the quality of the soil underneath, all while avoiding weed growth in the area.

Stabilisation

A single layer of fabric can make a huge impact on the stability of pavers, decking, and gravel paths. Fabric will prevent gravel from being trampled into the soil, which in turn means that you do not need to top up your gravel as frequently. It also reduces frost heave and prevents pavers from sinking too far into the subsoil.

Professional landscapers frequently use it under concrete pavers, even after the ground has been thoroughly prepared. Fabric lets you even out stresses and maintain an even drive or pathway.