Several years ago, we fenced our front yard and planted perennials and bulbs to poke through the pickets. We had a cold and rainy spring and I wasn't able to get outside and knock back the weeds and grass early enough this year. Here is my overgrown picket fence garden in the front yard, before I had a chance to do any weeding.
This next picture is the opposite direction, where I had already hand pulled grass from around whatever perennials survived the cold winter. I enjoy this discovery process but it is much easier to do in early spring. When we planted next to the fence, we didn't cut garden beds into the sod. I just dug a hole and popped the plant in. Unfortunately, that means that the grass is pretty well intermixed with the desired plant's roots. So I get on my hands and knees and pull it out by the roots as much as I can.
This is a lot of work, and should be mostly avoidable. If we had cut out the garden beds out of the lawn when we installed the fence, the plants would have had a major head start on the grass and I'd have much less weeding to do. So we have been removing each picket fence panel and cutting out the sod around the plants. This will also make it easier to mow as well.
It looks so much better. The picture below is right in the middle of the grassy section from before. It was mostly bare so I planted a Black-Eyed Susan vine and a bulb I found in another bed in the yard.
