Area is the end of a driveway. See attached rough drawing. The driveway is about 15' wide. The bed is 4' deep. The gray line is the split rail fence. The right side green circle is a Black Lace Elderberry. The left side green circle is a 18" high Andromeda. The bed extending off the top of the picture is full of ferns and is along the house. The Andomeda gets part sun. The rest of the bed to the Elderberry gets full sun. I'd like perennials that survive down to zone 5-6 at least. I have deer so as resistant as can be expected is nice. The Elderberry has wild tulips underneath during the spring. Anything you could suggested is appreciated. Thanks. Image link:

It depends a bit which weeds, and what their method of spread is. In almost any case, the black plastic edging will probably be a waste of time. Weeds that spread by runners, like daylilies or morning glory, will easily bypass even quite deep edging, and most weeds spread by seed so will come through the fence. As such, if you add some boards to the fence from the ground up you might make the most impact, but even that will be bypassed by seeds to some degree. But for seed-sown weeds, to some extent you can depend on the shade your plants are going to supply to limit the degree to which weed seeds find hospitable ground on your side of the fence. The better your shrubs cover, the less weed growth you will have... "the trick is to cover the ground," as a nursery near me once wrote in their catalogue. As your plants grow in, their root competition will also help to reduce weeds. The real key to ongoing success against weeds is to design into your border the capacity for you to get into that area and pull weeds early, and probably also to put down an annual covering of mulch. Either open areas or stepping stones, in other words, which will not show much among your plants in summer, and can maybe add a nice structural/pattern design element in winter. What you can also do is plant a groundcover that you like that will grow over toward your neighbour and maybe suppress his/her weeds a bit, or a lot. In my climate something like Asarum canadense would do the trick. But you have to want it in your border too! Ongoing vigilance and access, and discreet use of herbicide on weeds that grow by runners, is the nutshell answer that I would offer. That, at least, is how I approach my neighbour's weeds, which include morning glory and buttercups, and so attack via underground runners, surface runners, and seed through a spaced-board privacy fence. Karin L

I've trained a trumpet vine along a similar fence, and had considered doing the same with wisteria. The primary downside is getting to your neighbor's side of the fence to trim and train :-)

louislinus - Try searching board and post fence - those are the actual components of my fence but it really is a variation of post and rail. The first one beverly posted has the same components as mine but the second one has square rails instead of flat or split. They're all variations of classic split rail, which i still think you can do. Try a google image search for post and rail, board and post, open rail fencing, Kentucky horse fence..... you'll come up with a ton of pictures and some of them will show split rail with traditional houses in the background. They don't have to be surrounding a log cabin or a rustic stone cottage to look right. Your house makes me think of Bucks County and there are plenty of old colonials there with spit rail fence. (thanks Tibbrix)