Can I wood chip a small garden?

fleck

I was thinking of putting down wood chip instead of grass in a small garden, the area is covering maybe 20 feet by 20. The idea is just put down a weed barrier and then a few inches of wood chip. I see wood chip used to keep down weeds in flower beds and used on kids playgrounds and horses gallops but not usually as the mainstay of a garden , is there any reason for this , is this an idea to avoid and why?

cheers for any help.

bbam

No reason why it couldn't be done but there are a few considerations...

Cats love littering in bark mulch.. if there are cats in your area it may be a problem..
Bark mulch composts, and will need topping up about every two years..

That leads on to another problem I've seen a few times with your plan.. You put down the weed membrane with bark chip on top.. After a number of years it will have composted down quite a layer of real good quality soil on the top of the weed membrane.. This will grow just as serious weeds as you initially had and over such a large area may become quite a problem

Personally I see that a deeper initial layer of mulch with no fabric a better plan, if you kill off any serious weeds first then the deeper layer will give just as good of control..

Weed membrane I think is best suited to stone mulches or where a growing ground cover is planted through which will completely cover the area..

john t

It can give you a low maintenance garden, but cost wise.. You have too spray existing lawn/ garden then cover with mypex/ weed control fabric also you have approx 50sq mtrs too cover, 1 tonne bay of bark covers 10sq mtrs at approx 70euro x 5 bags= 350euro pus labour and fabric & spray..

MicraBoy

You could also try crumb rubber, which I have used in flower beds. I'm not sure how the cats get on with that stuff!

fleck

Thanks guys, i might rethink it, i hadn't considered it would compost down. I don't want grass so i might go for paving or stones.

paddy147

john t wrote: »

It can give you a low maintenance garden, but cost wise.. You have too spray existing lawn/ garden then cover with mypex/ weed control fabric also you have approx 50sq mtrs too cover, 1 tonne bay of bark covers 10sq mtrs at approx 70euro x 5 bags= 350euro pus labour and fabric & spray..

Where are you going with that figure??

The OPs garden is 20 x 20 feet so where did you get 50 square meters from??




50 x 1 meter roll of Mypex is approx 60 euro retail.Cheaper if you shop around or haggle,or if you can get it at trade price.

Around 20 bags of Bark Mulch at 8 euro a bag is 160 euro.Enough to do the job,with possibly some left over.


Thats 220 euro including the Mypex and not 350 euro.






P.S-You also dont need to spray.Go to any decent hire shop and hire out a petrol powered self driving turf cutter for 40 euro,and you can take up the entire garden in a few hours.

Even with the cost of hiring 1 out that is still only 260 euro.

magicbastarder

paddy147 wrote: »

Where are you going with that figure???:eek:

The OPs garden is 20 x 20 FEET so where did you get 50 square meters from?????

20 foot is just less than 7 metres.
seven metres by seven metres is 49 square metres.
did you think he meant 50 metres square?

to be fair, 20ft x 20ft is just over 37sq m.

paddy147

magicbastarder wrote: »

20 foot is just less than 7 metres.
seven metres by seven metres is 49 square metres.
did you think he meant 50 metres square?

to be fair, 20ft x 20ft is just over 37sq m.

Yep just a shade over 37 square meters,and not 50 square meters.
Thats a big difference and a difference in costings too.