How do I keep weeds from reccurring?

My daughter and I just finished weeding a long neglected flower bed. It has multiple azaleas and we just planted some new ones in the gaps. There are no other plants in the bed nor do I plan on putting any other ones in this particular bed.

That was the background. I do want to put a boarder and mulch around the bed to make it look well-kept (you can tell at one time it was well maintained.) I do not want to use weed killer if possible because of the azaleas.

I read you can put 7–9 layers of newspaper down and then put the mulch on top to help prohibit weed growth without changing the natural soil processes. Has anyone done this? Do you know of any other method that works well? One of the reasons I liked the newspaper idea was because I have plenty of it to use without additional expense.