If you’re looking for professional help with gardening or are trying the hobby for the first time, hiring a landscaper is a sensible option to ensure your plants and trees get the help they need to thrive.
However, after seeing the work of the hired team, one person quickly regretted the tree trimming.
In a post on the misleadingly named subreddit “r/marijuanaenthusiasts” – a community for tree lovers – the gardener shared a picture of the landscapers’ work and asked if their approach would actually harm his lemon tree.
“I had landscaping work done and they put this weed control fabric around my lemon tree,” they captioned the photo. “Will this have a negative impact on it?”
It didn’t take long for the community’s voice to emerge, with most saying this was a bad idea.
“Yes, it will have a negative impact,” said one user. “I would remove it and add a thin layer of mulch.”
“Depends on whether you think water and oxygen are important to trees,” another user quipped sarcastically.
A master gardener in a cultivation provided many resources and wrote, “Over time, it eventually suffocates the soil beneath it, making it lifeless and anaerobic, especially if you use synthetics.”
In fact, the garden fleece deprives the roots of much-needed water and oxygen and interrupts the transfer of nutrients throughout the tree. In a fight for survival, the roots may even start to grow up through the fleece, which could end up wrapping themselves in circles around the tree and strangling the trunk – this is known as girdling.
Although garden fleece is promoted as a weed control agent, it often does more harm than good. If it is made of plastic, it releases micro and nano plastics as it breaks down due to weathering and the growth of weeds underneath and above it. This plastic stays in the environment for decades and can contaminate the soil by leaching the harmful petrochemicals used to make the material.
If it is made of a strong fabric, the roots of plants and weeds are likely to become embedded in the material, making it much more difficult to remove and not solving the problem you were trying to fix.
In fact, garden fleece is mainly intended to prevent stones from sinking into the ground during gravel installations, so if you are not using it for that, it is better to leave it natural.
This gardener learned his lesson and we can only hope he was able to convince the landscapers to rip the fabric out before they moved on. Since the tree provides lemons and helps reduce weekly shopping bills – plus it provides natural shade and cooling and promotes biodiversity – they will want to keep it thriving for many years to come.
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