Adding rock or bark mulch (or a myriad of other mulches that have come on the market) to your landscape beds can have many benefits including reducing weeds, adding organics to the soil as the mulch decomposes (this would be a benefit of an organic mulch like bark… not rock), and giving your landscape an overall “finished” appearance. Here’s a little trick that we have been using in our design studio for years with rock mulch.
There are many different kinds of rock mulch and they come in many different sizes. A popular rock mulch here in Reno is 4” river rock. When using rock mulch people tend to put down only one size. They’ll spread, say, a uniform cover of 2” or 4” rock over their entire landscape.
We decided to get a little more creative. Several years ago we started specifying a blend of sizes such as 40% 4” minus river rock and 60% 1 1/2” minus. First… loosely spread the 4” minus rock over your landscape bed, leaving some areas covered, some bare, some areas thick, and some areas thin (I think you get the point). Then come back in with your 1 1/2” minus rock and cover up the bare or thin areas. It is really easy to do and doesn’t really result in any extra work.
You’ll end up with something like this…
I think it creates a more interesting texture then if we had covered the ground with only one size of rock. What do you think?
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