How can I prepare my front yard for landscape cloth & re-landscaping?

there is a weed oreventiative you can purchase at stores such as Lowe’s & Home Depot. Preparing the soil by removing all established weeds ahead of time really works the best. Use good soil. Mulch if possible. I use a nontoxic weed spray of vinegar, salt & dawn dish soap to spray weeds in the hot sun. Remove them when they die. I have also used thick layers of wet newspaper around the plants & covering the soil under my mulch. Works wonders..even if you are mulching with stones!

I have had the same experience with the cloth in a garden which is surrounded by lawn. I now put in the plants and add a good 3 inches of cedar mulch around them but keep the mulch at least three inches away from the base of the plant. You can also place down some newspaper or cardboard before adding the mulch. The fabric eventually rots out anyway and it sometimes makes it hard to add new plants. For soil prep use a good quality top soil and add some composted sheep or cow manure to the mix to give your plants a good start.

You will always get weeds at some point. Weeds are spread by wind wildlife and people. Remove any existing grasses weeds, saturate the area with plain old white vinegar. Lay landscape fabric, then add your rocks or mulch. Any weeds that appear will be easy to pluck as they are on top of the landscape fabric and shallow rooted. You can just spray with vinegar to kill them.

That's because you are using wrong product. Do not use landscape cloth need to use a barrier that nothing will grow thru like heavy duty thick mil. landscape plastic. The cloth is more for water flow & erosion issues.

I don’t use any barrier under my mulch. Just make sure to use at least 4 inches of mulch.