Wood Chip Mulch: The Most Underrated Thing You Can Do for Your Garden

Ask any professional gardener the highest-value, lowest-effort improvement for beds and borders and you'll get the same answer: mulch, properly, once a year. And the best general mulch isn't the dyed bagged stuff. It's arborist wood chip: the mixed chip of branch, leaf and wood straight from tree work like ours.

What a 7-10cm layer actually does

• Suppresses weeds by blocking light to the soil surface, one thick application beats a season of hoeing.
• Holds moisture through Dorset's increasingly dry summers, cutting watering dramatically.
• Feeds the soil as fungi break it down, arborist chip's mix of wood and green material makes it particularly good at building soil life.
• Buffers temperature and protects soil structure from winter rain compaction.

How to apply it

Weed first, water if dry, then lay it thick. A thin scattering does nothing. Keep it a hand's width clear of woody stems and tree trunks (piling mulch against bark invites rot), and top up annually as it composts down into the bed.

The honest caveats

Don't dig fresh chip into soil (temporary nitrogen lock-up, as mulch on top it's a non-issue), and skip it directly around nitrogen-hungry annual veg. Everywhere else (borders, shrubs, hedges, paths, under trees) it's hard to overpraise.

Ours is produced from local Dorset tree work, aged in windrows for six weeks, and delivered in 500-litre bags or 4m³ loose loads. Order online or call 01929 480 995.