Customer story. Buckley, Washington
DOTDAY has won my husband's approval. When we need to replace more, we're definitely rebuying.Erika, Pups N' Blooms
Erika grows more than a hundred dahlia varieties behind her home in Buckley, Washington, with Labradors Hank and Murphy never too far away. Their garden paths get plenty of paw traffic every day, and some of the fabric she had previously installed wasn't holding up quite the way she'd hoped. So when it came time to redo a few of those well-loved walkways, she decided to give DOTDAY XBAR 5oz dual-layer a try. Here's how it went.
Erika had already put landscape fabric down earlier in the season, but by midsummer some of it was lifting, wrinkling and fraying along the cut edges. With Hank and Murphy making regular rounds through the garden, those walkways see plenty of everyday use. And because the paths are how Erika reaches all those raised beds, she wanted something that would feel a little more substantial underfoot, and under paw.
I have a few rows to redo from paw traffic damage and some rows just due to really poor quality of what I bought locally this year.
The local stuff was more cloth-like rather than plastic.
The dual layer is what I got as a result from your calculator. Cool tool! It's just for walkways to keep grass from growing between my raised beds.
Erika's description gave us a pretty good clue. A lighter, more cloth-like landscape fabric can work well for certain applications, but a busy garden walkway asks a lot more from the material. Between daily foot traffic, two Labradors, tight turns and cut edges around raised beds, these paths needed something with more structure and resistance to movement and fraying. That's where XBAR made sense for her particular setup.
Available in 9 roll sizes
From $37.99 per roll, or $0.15 per sq ft.
5 oz dual-layer woven. Nine roll sizes. Erika ordered the 3 x 100 ft.
Two layers, one job each.The woven face carries the load; the needle-punched backing blocks light and stops pumping.
332 lb CBR puncture resistance.ASTM D6241, so angular stone and machine traffic do not open it up.
10.5 gal/min/sf water flow.ASTM D4491. Breathable under load instead of pooling beneath the surface.
12 inch guide lines woven in.Keeps rows, cuts, and overlaps straight across a long run.
29.5 mil thickness, sealed edges.Cuts clean with a knife and does not unravel.
When Erika asked what might work better, XBAR 5oz was already on our minds, but we wanted to understand the space before suggesting anything. As it turned out, she'd already used our Fabric Calculator herself, and it had pointed her toward the same fabric. Walkways, regular foot and paw traffic, narrow runs between fixed beds and a longer-term installation all made XBAR a natural fit.
Designed for applications that need added strength and separation, including gravel, pavers, hardscape and high-traffic areas. And, as Hank and Murphy helped demonstrate, busy garden walkways too.
XBAR combines a woven polypropylene layer with a non-woven needle-punched layer, giving the fabric a little more body and structure than a lightweight single-layer material. For Erika's narrow, high-traffic garden paths, that combination turned out to be a great fit.
The woven layer provides strength and helps resist tearing, while the needle-punched layer adds body and stability. Together, they create a more substantial surface for areas that see regular traffic.
This was one of the details Erika was most excited about before the roll even arrived. When XBAR is cut around a bed edge or shortened to fit a path, the edges stay neat instead of easily unraveling into loose threads.
Hank and Murphy use these narrow walkways every day: walking, turning, playing and occasionally making themselves very comfortable. It's a pretty good real-world test for a garden path.
Permeability is especially useful when fabric runs alongside raised beds. Rain can move through the material rather than simply running along the surface of the path.
Printed guide lines run the length of the roll and give you an easy visual reference while laying it out. For long, narrow paths like Erika's, they also help keep everything looking nice and straight.
XBAR is rated for 5+ years, making it a good fit for garden areas where you'd rather spend your next season growing things than redoing the same paths.
DOTDAY XBAR 5oz is our dual-layer weed barrier for areas that need a little more strength, including gravel, pavers, walkways and other frequently used spaces. A woven polypropylene layer provides strength and weed suppression, while the non-woven needle-punched backing adds body and puncture resistance. It's the same 3ft x 100ft roll Erika used between her raised beds.
Think garden walkways, dog runs, patios, pavers and rock beds: anywhere the fabric needs to handle regular movement from feet, paws, wheelbarrows or the material placed above it.
Erika kept her installation wonderfully simple: clear the old fabric, roll out XBAR, trim it to fit and staple the edges. Hammer. Staples. Scissors. That's it.
Measure your walkway lengths and widths and add them to the Fabric Calculator. It'll help recommend the fabric and roll quantity for your space, just like it did for Erika.
Her caption, not ours, and one that definitely made us smile. The roll arrived, Hank and Murphy carried out their inspection duties, and Erika started with the section of the garden she'd most wanted to redo.
The roll landed on the porch and Hank was there to welcome it, looking very much like he'd personally placed the order.
Murphy soon joined Hank for a proper inspection before installation began. At this point, we're fairly certain no landscape fabric enters this garden without Labrador approval.
Erika kept the installation simple. After clearing the previous fabric, XBAR was rolled along the walkways, trimmed to fit and stapled around the edges. No complicated setup needed.
Eventually, Erika ran out of landscape staples before finishing every section. Luckily, she'd started with the walkway that had been bothering her the most. We completely understand that strategy.
I literally kicked my sandals off and started walking around the area we did.
Erika, @pupsnblooms_
There are plenty of technical ways to talk about landscape fabric: tensile strength, flow rate, UV resistance and material weight. But Erika gave us a much better review. After finishing the walkway, she kicked off her sandals and walked across the XBAR barefoot. That's when she gave it the description we couldn't have come up with ourselves. In her reel she puts a bare foot on the fabric and the caption reads: it's not just weed barrier, it's carpet for the outside. And Hank seemed pretty happy with the upgrade too. The final frame of Erika's reel shows him sitting right in the middle of his new path, toy in mouth, looking very much at home.
Looking forward to the durability and the lack of fringe at any cut lines. The anti-fringe alone has been what excites me to try DOTDAY!!
So far we are SO impressed! This isn't weed barrier... this is carpet for the outside!
DOTDAY has won my husbands approval. So when we need to replace more, we're definitely rebuying!
Erika used XBAR 5oz dual-layer for her garden walkways, but every garden is a little different. If you're not sure whether XBAR, SHIELD or TERRA makes the most sense for your space, our Fabric Calculator can help point you in the right direction. Sometimes that's XBAR. Sometimes it's one of the others. The important part is choosing the fabric that fits the ground underneath it.
Pups N' Blooms is a small Buckley, Washington business where flowers, fragrance and two very involved Labradors all share the same backyard. Erika grows dahlias from more than a hundred tuber varieties and hand-pours small-batch soy candles designed with the whole household in mind, dogs included.
The dahlias also carry a lovely family connection. Erika's husband's grandfather grew dahlias in South Bend, Washington, and some of his tuber varieties were passed down through the family. Erika decided to learn everything she could about growing them so those varieties, and the story behind them, could keep going.
What grew from that is a wonderfully full backyard garden: galvanized raised beds lined up in neat rows, sweet peas and scabiosa climbing overhead, dahlias packed throughout the space and narrow walkways connecting everything together. And, of course, Hank and Murphy making their rounds.
So far we are SO impressed. This isn't weed barrier.
Erika, @pupsnblooms_, the day the roll arrived
Long before landscape fabric came into the conversation, we were simply chatting with Erika about what she was growing. One conversation turned into another, there was a sweet pea and cucumber trellis experiment involved, and somewhere along the way we established that the garden may technically belong to Hank. No pitch. No product conversation. Just garden people talking about gardens.
It started because we genuinely enjoyed following what Erika was growing: sweet peas, scabiosa and more than a hundred dahlia varieties tucked into her backyard in Buckley.
Erika was trying sweet peas and cucumbers together on a trellis to see how they'd do. We had thoughts about timing. She had thoughts about root space. Naturally, it became an experiment in the name of science.
At some point we suggested that the garden was actually Hank's and Erika was simply helping maintain it. Her answer? "Basically." We haven't found much evidence to the contrary.
Later, Erika mentioned DOTDAY in her story before we'd ever asked her to try anything: "Time to replace some spots and see what you guys are all about."
A few months of small, genuine conversations came before a roll of fabric ever entered the picture.
What started with garden conversations and a trellis experiment eventually turned into Erika trying XBAR on the paths she uses every day. No sponsorship. No gifting arrangement. Just a relationship that grew naturally, with Hank and Murphy involved at nearly every step.
After we'd been talking gardens for a while, Erika mentioned trying DOTDAY herself. We hadn't approached her with a product pitch.
Before recommending a fabric, we asked which areas she wanted to redo and whether she could show us the paths. We wanted the recommendation to fit her garden rather than simply point her toward a product.
Before we'd settled on a recommendation, Erika had already used the DOTDAY Fabric Calculator, and it had suggested XBAR's dual-layer construction. Her reaction: "Cool tool!"
The fabric she had previously used wasn't holding up well under the amount of paw traffic those walkways receive. That helped confirm that a more substantial fabric made sense for this particular application.
She installed it. She filmed it. She shared what she thought. Every quote from Erika on this page is hers, and there was never a script telling her what to say. That's exactly how we like it.
There's plenty of good landscape fabric out there, and different materials are made for different jobs. What makes XBAR useful for paths like Erika's is the combination of a woven layer and needle-punched backing, clean cut lines and enough structure for areas that see regular traffic. Her garden also gave us a nice opportunity to clear up a few common landscape fabric misconceptions.
Landscape fabric doesn't work. It depends heavily on the fabric, the application and the installation. A material that's perfect for one part of the garden may not be the right choice for a busy walkway.
All weed barrier is basically the same. There are meaningful differences in weight, construction and intended use. XBAR's dual-layer construction is designed for applications where additional strength and structure are useful.
Fabric under a path blocks water. A permeable landscape fabric allows water to move through it, which is especially useful beside raised beds where you don't want rainfall simply running along the surface.
Cut edges always fray. Construction matters here too. One of the features Erika was most interested in was XBAR's ability to hold a cleaner cut edge.
Dogs are going to destroy it anyway. Hank and Murphy certainly give these paths a workout. That's exactly why choosing a fabric suited to higher-traffic areas mattered for Erika's garden.
Installing it is a huge project. For this particular installation, Erika needed three things: a hammer, landscape staples and scissors. She tackled the section that bothered her most first and had it down in an afternoon.
If you're covering nursery rows, flower fields, dog runs, larger garden paths or client hardscape projects, we'd be happy to help you figure out the right fabric and quantity. We offer pallet pricing for larger projects and can send samples so you can see and feel the material before committing to a bigger order.
DOTDAY XBAR 5oz, in a 3ft x 100ft roll. A dual-layer fabric: woven polypropylene bonded to a non-woven needle-punched backing, built for paths, gravel, pavers and other surfaces that get walked on.
For Erika's walkways, regular traffic and the longer-term installation made XBAR the best match from our Fabric Calculator. SHIELD 3.2oz woven is better suited to weed control in garden beds, planting rows and similar applications, while TERRA non-woven geotextile is designed around drainage, filtration and separation. Different ground conditions call for different fabrics. That's why we make all three.
XBAR is made from polypropylene and does not use a chemical weed treatment. Hank and Murphy regularly walk and lounge on Erika's paths. As with any landscaping material, loose scraps and offcuts should always be cleaned up after installation.
Yes. XBAR is water permeable, allowing rainfall to move through the material rather than simply running along the walkway surface.
Measure each run's length and width, add a few inches of overlap at joins and bed edges, and put the numbers into the Fabric Calculator. It returns the roll size and count. A 3ft x 100ft roll covers 300 square feet, which handled Erika's worst section with fabric to spare.
Yes. XBAR is the DOTDAY fabric for gravel, rock and pavers. Many customers lay it bare first, as Erika did, then top it with gravel or wood chips later without replacing the fabric.
A hammer, landscape staples and a pair of scissors. No crew and no machinery. Clear the old fabric, roll XBAR along each run, cut it to fit and staple the edges every 12 to 18 inches.
Order on the XBAR product page at thedotday.com. Rolls ship from our Miami Gardens, Florida warehouse to anywhere in the US. Contractors and growers can request bulk pricing for pallet quantities.
On her Instagram, @pupsnblooms_, and reshared on @dotday_landscape_fabrics.
Thank you for trying our calculator, for trusting a brand you hadn't used before on a part of your garden you rely on every day, and especially for letting us follow along as Hank and Murphy inspected the whole process. Getting to know Pups N' Blooms, and getting to be a tiny part of this garden, genuinely made our week.
If Erika sent you here, take a look at her dahlias and hand-poured candles while you're here. And if you came because you're figuring out your own garden paths, the fabric you saw throughout this story is XBAR 5oz.
Disclosure. This is not a sponsorship and not a gifting deal. Erika bought her roll, laid it herself, and every photo and quote on this page is her own, shared with permission.
Tell us what you're working on and what the area needs to handle. We'll help point you toward XBAR, SHIELD or TERRA, whichever actually makes sense for the job. Because we'd rather help you choose the right fabric than simply sell you the heavier one.
