There are loads of choices, including scorrias, crushed granites and pebbles, but the cheapest is your old fashioned chip bark. Again, with this there are many to choose from. Soft fall, which is fine and compacts well, to larger wood-chips in many colours. Colored wood chip mulch is dearer, with the dearest being the black colored mulch, it looks great but the dye runs for awhile after watering, so if you have light concrete etc I would avoid it unless it is enclosed with garden edging. The natural bark mulch is cheapest, it has bits of all types of natives like eucalypts and bits of twigs in it, the councils offer this mulch in most areas either discounted with your rates notice or free. Tis is because they mulch after council clean up of council owned trees and removal of old trees etc. This mulch is fine to use, but occasionally there are bits of other things in it as the tr Ees can come from storm damage etc, and it is simply a way for council to dispose of the waste material. Check your council website for local pick up points.
Pleas do not use coloured mulches! Their colours fade over time and when leaves and twigs etc fall on them it stands out...much better to use a natural colour.
Coarse mulches are better for allowing rain to penetrate through to the plants.
Any sort of rock will increase the heat so you need to factor this in.
Maria, I have used street tree mulch, a few different stones, with one being river stones, in two sizes where I get mine from and one called tuscan, available in a few sizes too and I've also used woodchips and there appears to be no stand out winner or looser, nor have I found that the stone beds cause any sort of harm to the plants, even though I agree with @geluka that the very nature of stones would suggest that they would get hot. Providing none of the mulch is right up against the trunk or base of your plants, midesign0401's suggestions are all perfect, but as far as the cheapest for your rental, woodchips or street tree mulch but as will all light mulches like this, the birds will move them around and it would be advantageous to have a border of some description to try to hold them in, otherwise if you cant or don't have that, then I'd have to suggest stone as it stays exactly where it's put and birds don't disturb it at all either. I have attached a few photo's, the first two of which have the different stones river and tuscan respectively and the last photo has wood chips. You can see in the first photo that I have limestone blocks, mainly as a pretty border to accomodate the raised beds but in the last photo it hold in the wood chips. The second photo has the tuscan pebbles so the limestone edging is much lower and the beds of which there are five, are not raised much at all as they border the driveway.
Coloured mulch should be banned! Heavenly only knows what is in the dye. And as a professional garden designer, I think that it looks awful. Anything that is so totally unnatural is out of place in a garden - it is merely gaudy. In my area there are pine barks, and pine bark mulch which is a blend of sizes that is by far the best. It is dearer but is great for keeping the moisture in and keeping the soil cool. These are the 2 main reasons in the hot and dry parts of Australia that we use mulch, so it is best to use the products that are most effective. When gardens are properly planted with the correct spacings for plants, the plants eventually join together and become self mulching over time with some added mulch during the summer months.
mldesign0401
geluka
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