Want a Fresh Look for Your Yard?
If you’re looking to landscape your yard in Camas, Washougal, or Vancouver, Washington, you may be interested in both learning more about and using mulch. Mulching your yard can keep soil moist and weed-free. However, if you make certain mistakes when applying mulch to your yard, you could inadvertently increase water runoff and actually promote soil erosion instead of reducing it. To skip the stress, just call us here at Urban Eden Landscaping for expert landscaping services and lawn care. If you plan on refreshing the mulch in your yard on your own, keep these tips in mind.
10 Tips When Using Mulch in Your Yard
Landscape designers and professionals such as the experienced team at Urban Eden Landscaping have years of experience with mulch and other landscaping tools. Keep these tips in mind when you are planning to use mulch in the yard.
1. Use Mulch as an Accent
One of the most popular ways to use mulch in the backyard is to use it as an accent and for its aesthetic value. Mulch can be a great way to complement your home’s exterior. For example, dark mulch can contrast with a flower bed or a neutral siding. Many people enjoy the look of red mulch when combined with brick houses. You can experiment with different colors and types of mulch to get the look you want!
2. Consider Your Whole Yard
One of the most common mulching mistakes we see is homeowners using way too much mulch in the yard with a few shrubs here and there. Landscape design is important if you want to control the moisture of your soil. It’s best to cover the soil with your shrubs for complete vegetative cover. Then, you should apply mulch to those areas so that you can control the moisture. For help designing your perfect yard, contact the landscaping professionals at Urban Eden Landscaping!
3. Clean Out Old Mulch
Don’t just add new mulch on top of old mulch. It’s best to ensure that you take out at least some of the old mulch to avoid various levels of decay in between the mulch and the soil.
4. Pay Attention to Depth
Believe it or not, there’s an art to laying down mulch in the yard. When you get close to any edges in the yard, whether it’s a steppingstone or tree trunk, you should thin out the layer of mulch. There’s no real benefit to having a pile of mulch right next to the driveway, so taper the depth of mulch down to the edges in your yard.
5. Try Out Different Types of Mulch
There’s no one size fits all when it comes to mulch. There are multiple different types and textures of mulch ranging from pine straw to cocoa bean shells. If you want a new look in the backyard, switching up textures and colors of mulch can have a drastic effect. For more information or advice, call us here at Urban Eden Landscaping!
6. Don’t Leave Soil Bare
If you have areas on your property that have bare soil, don’t ignore them. Bare soil in the yard can cause erosion and sediment runoff. Applying mulch to your yard (properly) can help control erosion. Research shows that bare soil loses five times as much sediment as soils covered with mulch.
7. Don’t Forget Your Trees
Make sure to apply mulch around the base of your trees. It works great and looks even better. Call Urban Eden Landscaping for expert landscaping services in Vancouver, WA!
A thin layer of mulch around the base of the trees in your yard can help prevent soil erosion around the roots and protect them from other plants, lawnmowers, and critters. Plus, it looks nice! Call Urban Eden Landscaping for expert landscape design and other lawn care services.
8. Don’t Blindly Lay Down Tarps
Putting down landscape fabric or layers of plastic between the mulch and soil may be appropriate in some situations, but it’s likely that you’ll overuse it. Landscape fabric and plastic can actually cause more water runoff and keep the garden from looking as nice as it could. If you use organic mulch, you don’t really need any landscape fabric because the mulch will improve the soil and needs direct contact to do so. Plastic or fabric can prevent water from reaching the soil and weeds can grow into the landscape fabric. Additionally, natural shifting of the mulch could have the plastic or fabric show through which doesn’t do much for the aesthetic value of your backyard oasis.
9. Don’t Use Bad Mulch
One of the biggest mistakes homeowners make when it comes to mulch is procuring it from an unreliable source. For example, mulch could be stored improperly and delivered with weed seeds in it. It can be really hard to rid your yard of weeds once they take root.
10. Use the Right Amount of Mulch
In general, we recommend using three inches of organic mulch and applying it twice a year. When you mulch with the right amount at the right times of year, you can help protect your yard from weeds and conserve moisture (which reduces the amount of water you have to use on irrigation). If you use inorganic mulch or pea gravel, you can get away with just using two inches of mulch.
What Can Urban Eden Landscaping Do For You?
If you’re thinking of adding mulch to your yard, you should give us a call here at Urban Eden Landscaping. We have years of experience in landscape design and other lawn care services. Since the start of the business the clients have always come first and that is what has given Urban Eden the reputation they have today. Feedback is highly encouraged from clients in order to make the landscaping process as smooth as possible. Many of the clients that are serviced weekly have continued to have a loyal relationship with Urban Eden year after year.