Black plastic sheeting to suppress weeds - needs to be thick and heavy - any recommendations?

[Fauve]

I know I could use carpet but I'm going for a quick fix here. Locally I can only see quite flimsy stuff - I want some thick stuff, ideally some that will stay down on its own, not needing bricks, stones etc to weight it down. Any ideas?

use the cheap stuff and put loads of bark on top, that's worked for me

Thanks. I know I sound fussy, but I don't like bark that much, it gets all over the edges of the plastic. But I could put gravel type stuff on it.

pond liner.

Now that is an idea. Have you used it, mumofmonsters? Is it expensive?

actually it was on offer when we got it! works great but does need weighting down. We had ours in for 5 years before we pulle dit out and it had worked well, only a few holes with weeds poking thru which is where birds had been digging when our bark got a bit sparce!

pond liner is about £3 a thingy (metre?) I was eyeing some up the other day. Also go to local builders yard, they sell thick black sheeting for not much money. I got huge off cut for free by batting my eyelashes a bit.

I wouldn't use just any plastic sheeting - I used some plastic sheets (like you use when decorating) in the garden and over the winter they perished into lots of little bits. When I came to move them they just disintegrated into a right mess which then blew all over the garden.

Also, with pond liner you'd need to think about drainage or you'll get a new pond!

IMO I'd stick to the proper black porous stuff that you get from the garden centre...I don't remember it being expensive.

Thanks, I'll think about the pond liner; and I'd better go to a proper, biggish garden centre for a choice of sheeting.

you can get loads of things apart from bark too or different colours

Thanks - I quite fancy a white gravel. I'm going to have lots of lavender growing through part of it.