Bark Mulch Helps to Make Your Garden Beautiful

Introduction

Creating a beautiful garden can enrich an entire community. Working to create a garden that is pleasing to your neighbors, as well as to yourself, raises the level of good cheer in a community. Neighbors will stop by to appreciate the garden, and new friendships can be forged in this manner.

Purchasing the resources for creating a lovely garden from local businesses, such as garden centers, hardware stores, or farm stands, helps to support the local economy. My co-housing community recently purchased several mountains of bark mulch from a local business, and the group of households who ordered the mulch paid $1/square foot.

Spreading bark mulch does many things to enhance all types of gardens, whether they are homes to flowers, fruit, or even rocks.

1. Beautifies

The deep, dark brown of the mulch chips adds to the vibrancy of the entire garden bed. The beauty of the flowers and plants in a garden bed that has been spread with mulch become more noticeable, and reflect the love of the gardener who took the trouble to feed them in this way. The deliberate intention of creating beauty is evident to those who pass by, and more admirers will stop to soak in that beauty more often.

2. Makes Less Weeding

The bark mulch suppresses the growth of weeds by suffocating them. It is harder for them to grow, and the roots that they push down are not as deep. When some do grow, they are easy to pull up the roots with the stems, and thus eradicate them sooner. Free from weeds, plants grow fuller and those who bear food are more abundant producers of a bigger, tastier harvest.

3. Enhances Soil Quality

Not only does the deep brown, finely cut, bark mulch suppress weeds, it feeds the soil of the plants as it breaks down, so that the plants thrive, and annuals keep returning from year to year. Some plants may produce in such great abundance that gardeners have enough to share offshoots with their neighbors. This happens often in my co-housing community.

4. Conserves Water

In addition to making less work for the gardener by suppressing weeds and rewarding the gardener with more vibrant foliage and blossoms, bark mulch retains water. You won't need to pull out the hose as often when your garden is spread with mulch because one soaking of water is put to good use. Water conservation not only benefits the gardener, but also our dear planet.

Once the vegetables, flowers, and fruit plants were fed with mulch, there was some left to enhance the attractiveness of my meditative rock garden. The English ivy, crawling thyme, and rocks were snugly bordered with a 1-inch "margin" of the bark mulch, which adds to the peacefulness of the area as it separates the space from the rest of the back yard. The neatness of my rock garden's appearance adds to its sense of calmness as a visitor listens to the chimes that ring with the breezes.