tl;dr version: mulch in flower bed? or rocks/pebbles?

We have a flower bed in front of our porch that I think had mulch before we moved here, but maybe Mr. SK cleared it all out (mulch does need replacing after all) and then we had the water/drainage issues so we were both dealing with that. Now that that seems to be resolved, we have energy for more cosmetic things. Which is good because it looks horrible right now.

The flower bed has monkey grass along the outside (where the bed turns into the front walk) and because we had poison ivy there last year, and Mr. Sk was super aggressive with it (euphemism for chemicals), the monkey grass looks terrible and probably just needs to come out.

In the middle of the flower bed is a dogwood tree. Around the dogwood are four (? I think) azaleas and one hydrangea.

There's also a "wall" of cinder blocks coming out perpendicular to the porch for water flow control. We want to make that decorative of course.


I should take a photo but it looks so awful I'm embarrassed...

And then on one side of the wall is clover and another side is dirt.

So, we put install mulch all around the plants. Or maybe pebbles?

I don't really like mulch and it needs to be re-done (yearly?) so even though pebbles are expensive on front end, would they be cheaper long term?

How about water control? Mr. SK has built up the ground on the porch side, and between that and the "wall," the water goes the way we want it to now.

Would pebbles still allow water to run off? Would it be better or worse than mulch for water control? And is it ok to have azaleas and what not with pebbles around them?

Maybe I can take a photo later... Please don't judge!

I'll go with peebles.

I had pebbles in planting beds around the front and hated them. It is true that they can look nice (think Japanese garden) and don't need to be refreshed regularly like mulch, but...

1) Junk falls in them and then you have pebbles and debris. Worse-looking if the pebbles are a light color.

2) If you need to dig something up or plant something new in the bed, the pebbles are total pain to work with. Hard to move out of the way when you need to dig. I tend to move stuff around a lot, but if you're going to plant and then do nothing else, then clearly this is not as much of an issue.

3) Weeds will still come up in there, though you can put landscape fabric underneath to help that. OTOH, I don't like landscape fabric for the same reason that I don't like pebbles, namely trying to plant new things after the bed is set up initially.

4) When I finally decided to ditch the pebbles it took forever to get them all picked up. It's been at least 20 years and I'm still fishing stones out of the dirt.

On the mulch front....it's getting harder to find natural mulch, at least at the home improvement stores. They're selling a lot of the stuff that's been dyed with color. I'm not a fan of that look.

My neighbors ordered 15 yards of shredded bark mulch last year to put around their property. I ordered 4 yards of garden mix, which was more than I needed. We did a wheelbarrow-for-wheelbarrow swap. I got some mulch, and they got some dirt. Win-win.

I can't spell....


WTG, thanks soooo much for those comments, I will def. share with Mr. SK!!

Hang on, I'm gonna post some photos...

What WTG said. Gravel, pebbles, small river rock, whatever you call it looks great for a couple months. Then, it can turn to carp. If you put down two or three layers of weedblock (landscape fabric) under it with lots of overlap and a carefully done edge, that will *help* keep things from growing up, but seeds will still fall on it and sprout. One thing you can do is to spray it with Roundup a couple times a year... but... that's more chemicals (yuk!). If you do go this route, get smooth pebbles, aka river rock (not sure what is available in that part of the country). Around here, you can get crushed gravel which is random shapes with sharp edges. It's good for driveways since you get can get traction on it, but it's a pain in every other respect. Smooth pebbles won't pack down as much and will allow water to flow through it. The key is to get the right thickness and that kinda depends on just how smooth the pebbles are, how big they are, and whether you will be walking on it. A good six inches of round rock will temporarily hold and channel quite a bit of water, so it's good for making a swale (a course of rock down a shallow slope to channel water away). But eventually, silt will collect and every couple of years (like five?) it might need to be dug out, de-silted, and put back. With small, smooth, round pebbles, that's just tedious, not difficult.

Mulch breaks down. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It can add nutrients to the soil, and you can freshen up the appearance just by spreading a bit more on the top. Weeds will happily move in, but if the mulch is kept loose (like with a hoe or cultivator), it's easy to pull the weeds out.

Are there arborists that work in your area and chip on-site? If you can get a load of arborist wood chips, that can make a good base layer. You might want to let them sit in a pile first, to age a bit. Depending on what trees were involved, the chips can sprout. You also have to be a bit careful -- I've gotten chips from trees that were being cut down because they had nasty beetles infesting them and I ended up with nasty little longhorn beetles in the house. So ask the arborist if the chips you are getting are clean.

Woodchips or bark dust won't let water flow through as well, but it can absorb a lot of water itself. But then it retains the water for a while and can get saturated, so you're back to a surplus of water. A swale through the mulch can help channel water to where you want it to go, but you have to maintain that (just pull out any weeds and clean off dirt and silt) to keep it looking nice. If you have a serious drainage problem, lay in some PVC pipe under the affected area... either have the ends exposed so the water comes in and goes out, or get 4" or 6" perforated pipe in a sleeve of weedblock (it comes that way). That will help drain water away/to where you want it. To effectively move water, the pipe has to drop 1 inch for every 1 foot of length.

Keep the mulch off the base of the dogwood tree. Do not make a ring of bricks around the base of a tree and heap mulch into it. That will hold moisture against the base of the trunk and cause "crown rot" which can kill a tree in just a few years. It's better to have the top inch or two of the roots coming from the bottom of the trunk exposed than to have any mulch or dirt up against the trunk. The practice of putting a ring of bricks around a tree is a symbol of man trying to subjugate nature, and that's not very Japanese, now, is it?

I have seen "artificial" mulch made from shredded car tires. I think it looks awful. It would be functional under a swing set, but it's not a substance I would introduce into my yard.

Please ignore the plastic reptiles...












It looked really nice when the monkey grass was lush and green, but now it just looks horrible...

Separate from that, maybe we could just get it all covered with clover... or phlox???

If we did that, we'd just have to weed it??

Anyway, we are totally novices when it comes to lawn care, so any advice appreciated!!!!

PJ, thanks for those comments, super helpful!!

Maybe we'll back off pebbles (and peebles and peebels too). I bet Mr. SK will agree.

I don't know why I didn't think of phlox, Mr Sk loves phlox and if it could be green most of the time and in bloom sometimes, he would probably love that....

I'd give the monkey grass a year and see if it bounces back. If you used Roundup, that's supposed to break down in 14 days and not affect the plants from the roots -- it's only supposed to kill a plant through the leaves. But I don't believe anything Monsanto says.

I might remove that line of rectangular blocks and just let the lawn move back into that area. If you want to hasten that, spread grass seed, then cover it with four inches of steer manure. It's a bit pungent at first, but it will make a healthy lawn.

The crown of the dogwood is right at ground level, isn't it? You could gently dig down an inch or two around it to minimize rot potential. Or just leave it... but again, don't push dirt or mulch right up against the trunk... leave at least two inches of air around it.

If you want to make this a planting area, clean it out, lay two or three layers of cardboard or 12 layers of newspaper over it, mulch over that, and start planting. What direction are we looking? Southeast? (I'm trying to glean that from shadows at 3:00 in the afternoon.) Clearly it gets shade for some part of the day, so that will inform what you can plant there. I might put a line of shrubs a foot out from the edge of the porch.

Is this the front of the house? What do you really want to do with this space? Are you going for interest or low-maintenance? Colorful or muted? Punchy or harmonious? Do you want to walk on it or sit and look at it?

This is the front of the house.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
I'd give the monkey grass a year and see if it bounces back.

Ah, I'm skipping a step... We want to get rid of the monkey grass and make sure the poison ivy doesn't come back. We'd like to not use Rountup any more either. But we really need to not have poison ivy here, if for nothing else than the fact that this is the front walk and we don't need someone to walk here and brush their ankles up against it!

We want to make a low wall along the part where there's a curb. This should prevent run off from a part you can't see in the photos, which is not our land but has ivy and poison ivy in it.

quote:

I might remove that line of rectangular blocks

Mr. SK thinks we need that for water control. The plan is to make it decorative though...

quote:

The crown of the dogwood is right at ground level, isn't it?

I believe so, but I don't know what this means.

By the way, this flower bed faces north-ish. And once the dogwood's leaves come in, it's more shady.

quote:

Is this the front of the house? What do you really want to do with this space? Are you going for interest or low-maintenance? Colorful or muted? Punchy or harmonious? Do you want to walk on it or sit and look at it?

Yes, this is the front. And these questions are excellent, thank you!

We want low maintenance if possible. But we also want color, they gone now, but we get daffodils here, and the azaleas are coming in now, and later that hydrangea will bloom... Beyond that, we want low maintenance and I would prefer it not look like a dirt-bed, which is what it is now...

Creeping phlox is lovely but I planted some and it needed way more sun than I gave it. Turns out you need to be careful which one you select. From Wiki:

quote:

Several species and cultivars of phlox are commonly grown in gardens. Most cultivated phlox, with the notable exception of Phlox drummondii, are perennial. Species from alpine habitats (and cultivars derived from them) require full sun and good drainage. Those from woodland habitats (such as Phlox divaricata) require partial shade and soil rich in humus. Those from waterside habitats (such as P. paniculata) require full sun and moisture at the roots.[6] Phlox are valued in the garden for their ability to attract butterflies. Phlox can be propagated from stem cuttings.

Hostas can act like ground cover, at least for the growing season (no winter interest), and they're bullet proof. If you have bulbs in that bed they're also nice because they will grow over the top of the daffodil foliage (which should not be cut down, but rather left to die back on its own). If you think you might be interested, I can give you recommendations for specific varieties of hostas that I've had good luck with.

Not sure I understand what the blocks are buying you in terms of drainage control. The water sits on top of the ground and then will perc through the soil; the water below grade will be unaffected by the bricks. If you want them there for cosmetic reasons I would probably pick something more attractive than plain concrete blocks.

Hostas may be bulletproof but they are not deer-proof. Or rabbit-proof.

I'd plant some sort of ground cover like a walkable thyme or pachysandra. Beautiful, low maintenance. vinca will even give you flowers, but you might not have enough sun. Whatever fits the sun exposure you have there. But whatever you do, do not plant wintercreeper. You could even put soil in the bricks and let it mound over.

http://www.scgardenguru.com/gr...overs-for-shade.html

quote:

If you think you might be interested, I can give you recommendations for specific varieties of hostas that I've had good luck with

I love hostas and would love to have some here!


...
Re the cinder blocks, good heavens, yes we want something more attractive! This was meant to be a temporary solution to see if it would help. And it has indeed helped, although we've done so much water-related that it's likely it's not just one thing, but all of the things we've done that has helped.

So it's hard to see from the photos, but there's a box drain (top left in the first photo) there that is not fully functional, presumably because of a problem at some point along the in-ground drain line. After consulting with pretty much everyone on the planet, we've decided it's not worth it to repair the in-ground drainline. And I don't want to do any in-ground/under drain lines based on discussions I've had with water solutions companies, Roto-rooter people etc.

Anyway... also not in the photo -- well, actually, see the pink azaleas on the far right of photo #2? They are growing on a ridge (hill? slope?) which is not part of our property. Water runs down that slope and in heavy rains, the box drain over flows and the water pools all around the front of our porch and goes toward the window wells and then bad things happen.

Those ugly cinder blocks send the water away from the house and out into the yard and other places where it can continue to go down hill and away from our house.

There are actually three "walls" in the flower bed: one that is red with rounded tops, one that is on the far side of the dogwood, and then the actual cinder blocks.


If we could get them to be more decorative, and then surround them with greenery... hostas? I think it would be nice.

Hopefully that makes sense.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
Hostas may be bulletproof but they are not deer-proof. Or rabbit-proof.

The deer in Door County thought we had a salad bar around the house after we planted hostas.

Regarding rabbits....they only seem to go after one more tender early variety that I have in my yard. And usually only in early spring; after that they leave them all alone. It hasn't been a problem. And will probably be even less so this year as my neighbor sent me video of two foxes that have been hanging around in his back yard recently....

The NY Times had an article recently on “gravel gardening.” The reader comments seemed to say it’s not as maintenance free as it sounds.