How to Find Inexpensive Mulch

When you want to spruce up your garden, the landscape expenses can add up--but you can avoid spending a fortune on mulch. If you have some way to transport it, you can find as much inexpensive mulch as your yard can stand.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Look for sales at your local gardening center. The best time to find mulch is during the off-season when no one else is looking for it. Stockpile mulch at the end of the summer when it goes on sale so that you’ll be prepared for the following year’s gardening.

2. Contact your local municipality. Depending on how brutal the winter or hurricane season has been, the local municipality may have an abundance of mulch as a result of shredding all of the fallen trees. If you have a truck to cart the mulch, you can take as much inexpensive (usually free) mulch as you want. The municipalities normally do not deliver.

3. Contact tree-cutting services. They're in the business of cutting down trees. Some of their customers cut and burn their trees, while others request the tree-cutting service to haul the trees away. Those hauled trees usually become mulch. If the tree-cutting service has too many trees, they’ll be stuck with too much mulch. Contact them to see if you can get inexpensive, if not free, mulch.

4. Share with a neighbor. When you find mulch and buy it in large quantities, the per unit cost goes down. Before you put in your mulch order, find out how much cheaper it would be if you were to buy larger quantities and share the cost with a friend.