Grass / weeds invading perimeter bush areas

[jsouthco]

Around the perimeter of the house we have flowering plants / bushes spaced every 4 ft. From the kid mowing the lawn and blowing the clippings into the area we have grass / weeds growing between the bushes . I want to clean it up before the plants start to come back in spring.
The area has plastic down about 3" below the surface of wood chips. I was planning to pull all of the wood chips and plastic, put extra soil in to build up around 4" , install new plastic in to smother and control the weed / grass growth beneath and then cover with wood chips or ?. I would be adding brick edging to accomodate the new height and hopefully keep the clippings from getting in again..

My question is can I just add the new soil over the top of the plants without damaging them or do I need to do something else?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Allison1888]

building up flower beds

I wouldn't just put that much dirt over the flowers. You really need to dig them up and transplant them. Often that works well -- just make sure they have finished blooming first -- but that seems drastic from the plants' sake. Is there another solution?