Hello. My name is Thomas Lowe. I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, I'll be giving you some ideas about mulching around shrubs. You may want to think about picking out the right kind of mulch or the mulch of your choice. You can use several different materials. I have several different materials laying beside this dwarf boxwood hedge. But first of all before you decide to mulch your shrubs, especially mulching your entire landscape, I would recommend waiting until all of the leaves have fallen. If you live in a part of the United States where you have a lot of leaf droppings I recommend doing a lot of mulching right after all the leaves have fell. Because if you put down a lot of mulch in the fall, and the leaves fall, then when you go to rake the leaves then you're going to be raking up a lot of mulch. So you can get the best value for your dollar right after all the leaves have fell and you've picked your leaves. The reason why people mulch their shrubs because it does several different things. First of all it conserves moisture so you don't have to water as much throughout the months and years especially on newer shrubs. As you can see the roots are exposed in this little demonstration. So you don't want those to dry out. So you want to put some mulch on those depending on what type. Also mulching decomposes over time and it adds organic matter into the soil which will help the shrubs with more nutrients. And also it will slow down weeds. It won't completely keep weeds out but it certainly will slow the weeds so you don't have to do as much weeding. And also as talked about in other videos, the weed fabric you can do in conjunction with mulch when you put the weed fabric down first. So when you're ready to mulch, you can use many different types of material. Shown here, first of all, this is what's called mini nugget chips or mini nuggets. This is a very popular mulch that's found in a lot of the home improvement centers. Very popular, it comes in a 2 or 3 cubic foot bag. That's a bag that's about 2 foot wide and about 3 to 4 foot long. And so you can buy those in bags or also in bulk from your landscape contractor. They can deliver that in bulk too. Now, if you really like the brown cover I would really recommend mini nuggets. Mini nuggets, these are wood chips. Mini nuggets decomposes slower than as does pine straw. I know Pine straw is very popular in the southeast. We have a lot of pine trees here. So pine straw you certainly can use but it does decompose a lot quicker and you have to pine straw more often. But it is a little bit less expensive. But you just have to do that more. Mini nuggets decomposes slower. Any time you mulch I recommend mulching on a 3 inch layer, 3 inch layer mini nuggets, a least 3 to 6 inch layer on the pine straw, this will decompose quicker. So you may want this to be much thicker. Mini nuggets about 3 to 6 inch if you want but it decomposes slower so you don't have to replace it as much. Also decorative gravel. This is the medium P gravel. You can use gravel as mulch as well. Just know that in warmer climates around shrubs, it can heat up the shrubs a lot quicker. Also it's a lot harder to get rid of if you decide to go with a different type of mulch because it obviously permanent. But it will press down into the ground as time goes by. So rocks, when you put down a good layer of that you really never have to replace that on those. Also over here, this is cedar shavings or cedar chips. And cedar chips sometimes you can them at recycling centers, Christmas trees are recycled, you can use that as mulch. But the home centers also sell bags of Cypress mulch, bags of large nugget chips which look a lot like the mini nuggets. Mini nuggets are this size, the large nuggets that are very popular in home centers, they're about, probably about this size. I'd say about 3 times, 4 times this size. So one other tip with mulch is not only can you use that around your shrubs, but you can also use it as a path as shown here. And it also lends a good contrast of colors of textures. This is a mini nugget mulch contrasting the yellow cedar shavings as shown here on your gardening path as well. And you also can put the mulch in between the stepping stones. My name is Thomas Lowe. I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia. You can go to eHow.com/ThomasLowe to see other landscape videos. And also you can go to Facebook, Thomas Lowe Landscape Designs to view more of my landscape designs.
home section
