If nothing grows under the tree you could forgo the black plastic. It tears under traffic. The wood chips there sound fine.

The borders I would think fill them w/ the grass/leaves first and top w/ wood chips. If you transplant seedlings, so they come w/ a bit of potting soild it would probably work fine. You could use heavy cardboard to prevent the problem w/ newspaper blowing away. As long as it's not bermuda I'd do lasagna w/ newspaper or cardboard. If it's bermuda you'll need alot more work to dig it out or it'll grow back.

If you just want to seed the flower beds in the spring, you might need a layer of finished compost to get things going. You could mulch w/ more wood chips after they come up.

Use the search function on this page enter lasagna gardening . That's probably your best bet .
Do not put mulch under or around trees . They grow better with a wide empty area around their trunk .
If you don't have a compost pile , start one today .
To the future flower beds , add leaves you find this Fall . You too can become a curbside bag snagger !

The black plastic is a bad idea since plastic will keep your soil from breathing and can keep moisture from getting into that soil. Laying newspaper down is not difficult. I will put down a section and then weight it with some mulch to hold that section in place while I position the next section, never lay several sections of newspaper until you are prepared to weight each section down.

Just say no to landscape fabric as well. Arrrrgh, I just got finished tearing out some that had deteriorated in three years (10 year my a**.) It's just a nightmare when the weed seeds sprout on top they send roots right down through it. Then you can't pull the weeds effectively and you can't pull up the fabric easily, either.

I tried Grass B Gone this year, but it was really Grass Look Really Really Sick. Lord forgive me, but I'm lusting after my old #1 yard and gardening tool- Round-Up. I'd have to keep it a secret from my father, but if your father isn't fanatical about daylilies (or the environment) I fear my advice would be a VERY light spray of glorious death over your future beds.
I wonder if you can rent a trencher...but edge them with a three inch trench. Put the soil from the trench over into the bed. When the grass looks dead stomp on it while it's down so later you can have satisfying memories when you pull out stubborn sprigs.

Then go for cardboard or sheets of newspaper(one section at a time as mentioned) and pile on whatever mulch comes your way and top it with the wood chips.

If you skip your trench now, thinking you'll just weed whack your way to a trench eventually as you edge, you'll be in for a lot more work as the roots are ALWAYS deeper that you cut by turning your whacker sideways. Best to slam in a trench all at once on surprised grass. You can maintain your air moat/trench pretty quickly with a sideways whacker.

I guess if you rent a trencher and have a deep trench to start with you could place a sunken black plastic edge wall so low you could mow over it. That would help keep a neat line...but you'll still have to trench whack the bed side to keep a no man's land between your beds and invasive grasses.

I'm frustrated myself today. I hate Bermuda.

Not very experienced here, but well-read. :)

In your situation, I'd use cardboard in place of the black plastic. Especially if you can find a resource that gets bigger boxes, like an AC company or place that sells appliances.

The cardboard will smother like the newspaper but is less likely to tear and blow around while you are putting it down. The bugs underneath will eat at it between now and next spring. It won't tear like the plastic. It'll help the soil, etc.

I am going to do a much smaller patch in my front yard to ready for next year. Cardboard, dead tomato vines, and wood chips on top. Think of it as psuedo-lasagna/sheet composting. If I have any extra food scraps this winter, I may add them. This is obviously an experiment, but it's what I would do in your situation. Unless someone on here has an easier/better idea.

"It's just a nightmare when the weed seeds sprout on top they send roots right down through it. Then you can't pull the weeds effectively and you can't pull up the fabric easily, either."

been there, done that, ground my teeth down to nubbins while picking at that stuff...

& if you use plastic instead of landscape cloth, then one fine day in the future, you'll want to change your flowerbeds around, & you'll get to pick that stuff out with a pair of tweezers, itsy bitsy brittle piece by itsy bitsy brittle piece!

As several people have said, cardboard is a good base for a lasagna garden, & you can get tons of it at grocery stores, dollar stores, liquor stores, etc.

If you can find the boxes that already have been flattened, they're by far the easiest to handle, but you can make whole boxes or thick boxes or boxes with heavy staples more manageable by soaking them in a tub of water before trying to tear them.

& when you till up a new area, let it get 'stale';
leave it alone until that first crop of weeds sprouts from the seeds turned up by the tilling.

Then till it again, then plant.

Are you saying that you want to make beds out of nothing but wood chips, grass clippings, and leaves? Perhaps I'm missing something.

Please do not lay plastic over the root/soil system of any trees that you consider valuable. That environment (called the rhizosphere) is extremely essential to the health and well-being of your living soil as well as the trees. Tree roots are very shallow and widespread. Covering them with black plastic (or anything but a porous layer of about 4 inches) creates severe problems for soil and roots alike.

I concur that black plastic and landscape fabric are not good for soil and gardens. Avoid them. Here's what I suggest, and it's similar to what others have said.
Draw out your beds. Mow the grass or weeds very very short (some use Roundup to kill the grass, it's debatable if it harms the environment). Get a wheelbarrow and fill with water. Lay the cardboard or newspaper in there to get it wet, It will lay down better. Have some soil or even sand or any organic matter (leaves, grass) to throw over the newspaper or cardboard to hold it down. (An alternative if you are not shy about digging, is to just dig or scalp the sod off and flip it over on the bed. In other words, the root side up and it will decompose. You can lay leaves etc over that.) I definitely agree with digging a good trench to keep the weeds and grass out of the bed, or you would have to use some kind of a barrier/border. I am sort of against the idea of wood chips becoz they will be hard to really remove when you are ready to plant. If you are planting larger perennials or shrubs, you could just move the bark over, but I am liking bark less and less.
I used to lay bags of mulch or soil on the grass and in a few days in the hot Louisiana sun, it would kill the grass underneath. Someone should invent a biodegradable bag of good soil/compost to lay like puzzle peices over where a garden will go, and the bag just decomposes. I should invent that!
Laurie

I have a 1.25 acre lot and have been creating hundreds if not thousands of square feet of new garden beds via an assortment of lasagne and smothering schemes since the fall of 06. I have also dug many more hundreds by hand, before I discovered lasagne (still dig sometimes). I've also had major tree work done in the yard (Fall 05 and Fall 07) and have two BIG piles of wood chips, so I've worked with lots of chips.

Tell your friend you would love some wood chips. Have him dump them in a pile on your lot to age for at least 6 months, up to 2 or 3 years is better. Think carefully about where you want them dumped, because they are unsightly, but it must be convenient to a large dump truck and to you with your wheel barrow. When they've age in a pile they stay nice and moist, start to break down a bit, turn darker, and will make an attractive mulch for your garden and especially pathways - once your beds are defined. Personally I find them a pain to garden around before that. Because I transplant stuff around A LOT, they get in the way, get mixed in soil, and have to be neatened again. They also break down very sloooooowly.

The trees in your picnic area are probably maples. Gorgeous trees, but notorious for thirsty surface roots that dry out the soil and they are difficult to grow under. Go ahead and use the fresh chips in your area under the trees - no cardboard or plastic necessary, but you could lay down cardboard for additional weed suppression.

For the future garden beds, definitely DO NOT USE black plastic or landscape fabric. I tried both years ago to suppress weeds and ditto the problems already outlined on this thread. They are nothing but a future headache. Also, part of the way lasagne works is that the worms, other soil critters, and the freezing/thawing that occurs in cold climates help to work the decomposing lasagne bed into the existing soil.

For the new beds, the easiest albeit slowest way to go is lasagne. I always start with a paper layer. Newspapers work, but they are a bit of pain - they blow around easily, are fussy to spread, and when they break down, they break into peices which can become visible with shallow lasagne beds. Cardboard is easier to spread and tidier. I collect cardboard from everywhere, and it's pretty easy to find. Pizza boxes work great too. Remove all plastic tape and plastic labels and put the brown side up - looks prettier if part of the cardboard pokes through the mulch.

If you have decent topsoil already, you don't need a deep lasagne bed! I have successfully killed weeds with two inches of organic matter. My pathways through the gardens are usually terribly weedy by the time I've gotten around to mulching them. I use cardboard and just enough wood chips to cover the cardboard. Voila!

Sorry for the novella, but what can I say, I'm addicted to gardening, and to garden you need garden beds! Hehe. Here's some pics.

Lasagne bed in process - first layer cardboard, next coffee grounds and kitchen scraps, then topped with leaves. This one will sit for about 1 year.
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Garden path being mulched. Note that this is crabgrass growing in the path. Important note - don't wait until your crabgrass has gotten big and gone to seed. I had to mow and trim the edges because of all shoots going out sideways with lots of seedheads!
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Laid down cardboard -
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Then aged wood chips -
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Why anyone would spend money buying a plant killing material when simply covering that same plant material with newspaper or cardboard and covering that with a mulch material is beyond comprehension. There is no need to do that since depriving those plants growing in that space from access to the sun will kill them.

In the hot and humid South , wood chips and paper breaks down quickly . I find fresh , finely ground wood chips look quite nice in garden beds . The more the merrier ! Give it a try greenbug and let us know how it goes for you .

I wanted to add, you can use plastic in certain scenarios. However, I've only laid down plastic for a temporary period of time (1-2 months) and then remove it. And no mulch is piled on top of the plastic for these purposes.

I used clear plastic to experiment with solarizing areas in the way back section of my lot this summer. It is a wild area, that unfortunately has been taken over by many horrible invasives (Oriental bittersweet, Buckthorn, etc). There is a tremendous seed bank of invasive weed seeds out there. Solarizing works to kill weeds and more importantly, weed seeds, but it also kills all soil micro-organisms, worms, and critters under the plastic, so I only did it in a relatively small area. After removing the plastic I immediately started adding compost and organic matter.

You can also use black plastic to smother sod or thick weedy areas. Again, you'd only leave it down long enough to kill the weeds, and then remove. Cardboard and a couple inches of leaves will do the same thing, you don't have to remove them, and they will enrich your new bed.

I have built a bed out of woodchips, over bermuda, no less! I laid them down in the fall and I planted in it the following spring. It helped that the tree was still green :). I laid the chips down first. They were probably at least 24 inches high. It looked like a long grave! The neighbors thought I was doing a Halloween display. :) Through the fall and winter I added as much coffee grounds, table scraps and anything else I could get my hands on into it. In the spring I covered the whole thing with a good layer of dirt and compost. I planted young plants in it to start with, or added dirt to the hole if I had a big one.

Thanks everyone for all the helpful information!!

I think I will go the cardboard way. I made huge lasagna beds this spring with newspapers, fall leaves and topsoil topped with store bought mulch along the driveway. That was a lot of hard work, looked very nice in the beginning but as time passed, scraps of newspaper started flapping at the edges and they just dont look as good anymore for all the hard work and money spent. They flattened out with time also, probably because the material decomposed as one would expect.

Hence this time around when I am planning the flower beds along the boundary of the property, I started thinking of wood chips so that I get the raised bed effect.
My neighbor gets some kind of sawdust kind of material, but he said it is someone he knows well who delivers it for him as a favor and wouldn't do the same for me :(.
I think he also mentioned manure, but I don't know much about the stink or its effect on the aquifers (we drink well water where we live).

I had a tough time digging up the grass and even after rototilling, the grass and weeds grew back just as fast. And these are atleast a 100 ft length of flower beds I am talking about. I agree this is an ambitious project, partly inspired by my neighbor's yard, who is lucky to be retired and be able to spend all his time in the yard, but I am hoping the wood chips will be lighter to lug around than topsoil.

I am a little worried about termites though. I have read in these forums that they love softwood...any thoughts?

If you can get manure get it! Don't till, especially don't till in the grass. Lots of threads about no till, don't do it!

Black plastic and landscape fabric are usually a mistake. Black plastic as a temporary weed killing measure can work but you certainly don't want it over any areas that have tree roots or shrub roots and you want to remove it after it's done the job and before you pile on the mulch. You can use boards to hold down the plastic. I think you will want to prepare your beds by thoroughly killing off the existing grass and weeds by smothering, poisoning or stripping. I love wood chips but I would not smother with wood chips alone. I would lay down cardboard or whatever and then pile on the leaves and woodchips, etc. For more instant gratification you can strip the sod/weeds. If you like machines you can rent a sod-stripper. Or, you can strip sod the old fashioned way with a flat shovel and a strong back. Even after stripping the sod/weeds you will want a cardboard barrier topped with mulch. I tend to favor kill off sod/weeds a little further out than the bed will actually be to slow down the reinvasion of grass. A trench to separate the beds from the remaining lawn is a very good idea no matter what preparation techique you use. Fortunately, I don't have a lot of termite experience to share with you but from what I hear you shouldn't need to worry much; especially if the wood chips are not up against the house.