I'd like to make garden beds around my house and fence perimeters. I've planted bushes and perennials for the past couple of years, plus a tree here or there. They're all just growing in the grass. If I put newspaper around them, will it smother them as well as the grass?
I made two beds already by shoveling up the grass by hand and it killed my body and one of my trees died right after, I'm not sure if I clipped a root, or it didn't like the new dirt and mulch. I did not give it a mulch volcano but I did add some dirt and mulch where it had none before. I'm not sure what happened; around the same time I killed an anthill next to it with borax, then read that might have hurt the tree.
The physical labor of hand digging the grass out to make a bed is too much for the space I'd like to cover. I've read all over the place about using newspaper, then mulch to kill grass and make a bed. But I am nervous to cover newspaper around my existing plants and bushes and trees. Will their surface roots be smothered? Will they not like their environment to change?
