What’s the Best Landscape Fabric for Draining Water?

Laid properly, landscape fabric keeps weeds down and garden beds tidy. It blocks light from weed seeds in the soil, slows the loss of moisture, and stops gravel and mulch from mixing into the ground below.

It also has drawbacks, and the right fabric depends on your soil, how much sun the bed gets and how well the ground needs to drain. Below: what landscape fabric is, its advantages and disadvantages, and the main kinds, including which ones let water through best.

Meaning of Landscape Fabric

Landscape fabric is a sheet laid over soil to block sunlight from reaching it. It is made of woven or non-woven fibres and supplied in rolls.
Also called weed block, weed fabric or weed barrier, it limits weed growth by keeping light away from weed seeds already in the soil, which cuts the need for herbicides.

Advantages of landscape fabric

Because it shades the soil, landscape fabric slows evaporation and helps the soil hold moisture.

It also stabilises the surface and gives some erosion control on ground that tends to wash out in heavy rain. Under hardscaping it works as a separation layer, stopping rocks, pea gravel and other inorganic mulch from sinking into the soil.

Disadvantages of landscape fabric

Landscape fabric does not stop all weeds. It keeps seeds in the soil from growing, but new seeds can blow into the mulch on top of the fabric and sprout there.

Organic mulches such as wood chips also break down into compost over time, and weeds root easily in that layer. Gardeners often apply a pre-emergent herbicide to prevent this.

Kinds of Landscape Fabrics

The material matters. A cheap plastic sheet may look like it does the same job, but plastic sheeting does not let water through, and a bed that cannot drain will waterlog. Pick the fabric for the job: if drainage is the priority, use a permeable fabric, and for paths, gravel beds and drainage layers a needle-punched non-woven geotextile lets water through fastest.

Here’s a glance at some of the kinds of landscape fabrics

Prices below are indicative US retail prices for garden-grade rolls, given in dollars and feet; prices in India and for engineering-grade geotextiles differ.

Woven

Woven landscaping fabric is the most common type. It is usually woven from polypropylene tapes, or less often from natural fibres, into a strong, semi-permeable sheet.

Small gaps in the weave let water and nutrients through to the soil while blocking weeds from growing up towards the light.
It works best around trees and shrubs, or in flower beds where the plants stay put for years. Woven fabrics are usually black, green or a natural burlap brown.

Most are UV-stabilised so they hold up in the sun.

Price: rolls range from about $35 for a low-end 3 ft × 100 ft roll to $280 for a 10 ft × 300 ft roll.

Non-Woven

Non-woven fabrics, usually polyester or polypropylene, suit rock and gravel paths and beds.

Thin, heat-bonded non-wovens sold for gardens can be less permeable than woven fabric. Needle-punched non-wovens are the opposite: their thick mat of fibres passes water freely in every direction, which is why they are the standard filter and drainage fabric in civil works.

Non-wovens spread load well and stop stones sinking into the soil. Heavier, professional grades go under stone pavers and other large hardscaping.

Price: rolls range from about $20 for 3 ft × 50 ft to $180 for 10 ft × 300 ft.

Spun

Spun (spunbonded) fabric is a non-woven made from layers of continuous polyester or polypropylene filaments bonded together. It is the most heavy-duty garden fabric and hard to rip. It comes in a wide range of thicknesses, so it suits many uses.

Price: a thin 3 ft × 100 ft roll starts at about $20; thicker rolls of the same size cost $30 or more.

If drainage is the main job, it helps to know how water passes through the fabric. Our guide to how drainage fabric works explains flow across and along a nonwoven and which test tells you how much water it passes.

Perforated

Perforated fabrics are cheap and light, with pre-cut holes where the plants go.

The holes keep roots from drowning and make replanting easy, so these fabrics are common in vegetable and bedding gardens where plants are evenly spaced and changed often.