The beds in my small urban garden were set up two years ago by the
builder who did some hard landscaping at a time when I didn't pay much
attention to gardening issues. He put down weedproof fabric over the
soil, then bark chippings on top of that and suggested that when I
wanted to plant anything I cut a hole in the fabric. I've followed
this advice so far with various perennial shrubs. It does eliminate
any weeding and the chippings look neat, but part of me can't help
feeling that it's not the way proper gardeners do things.

Eventually as I stock the garden more and more it will become
impractical to keep this going, and I'll have to take the fabric up.
But in the meantime while things are getting established are there any
real problems with this sort of approach?

Cheers!

Martin