petitefrancaise

I've hired some gardeners to look after lawn and bloody leaves. Now that is something I never thought I'd be buying. What did I have kids for??

Mulch - I bought bags and bags of local natural undyed stuff from a local landscaper who mulches local trees. Apparently, according to a neighbour and the gardeners it's "too coarse" they would have used much finer stuff because it looks a lot nicer.

Pulaski

Our local landscaping supplier sells single- and double-ground mulch. I have been known to indulge in a little double-ground mulch to put along the front beds, approaching the front door.

SultanOfSwing

I have a couple of sample bags of triple ground in my office doing nothing, if you want three handfuls of it for no apparent reason ...

Pulaski

Given the difference between single- and double-ground mulch I would expect triple-ground to be mostly dust.

SultanOfSwing

No, it's just very fine, almost like twigs with a few lager bits. A lot of places we buy bulk from supply triple ground mulch they sell as 'premium' but we rarely need that as we make our own basic mulch out of off cuts, old trees and pallets and that in our yard.

Our customers do like the dyed mulch though, the Burger Kings we maintain all use red mulch in their planing beds. I think it looks quite nice though if used sparingly, I couldn't care less if trees aren't really red.

petitefrancaise

I quite like the brightly coloured ?glass pebbles. It can look really nice with the deserty plants around here. One guy down the road has a really cool front garden done with cacti, normal stone, coloured pebbles and a huge guitar!

SultanOfSwing

Some of the dry climate landscaping I've seen pictures of (mostly Arizona) looks really good. If you get a creative enough landscape architect, you can really do a lot with some coloured stone, large boulders and a few cacti

Anian

The chunkier mulch lasts so much longer. Our estate had the fine spray mulch blown out of a tube. The soil looks bare now, all the mulch has broken down completely in about two years - not just bare patches, completely gone.

SultanOfSwing

That sounds like hydromulch. That's not the same stuff as the bark mulch that would be used for planting beds and around trees and that. That's only supposed to be used when putting down grass seed or for erosion control though, so maybe someone screwed up with the landscaper ...

Could have been something else entirely of course, but hydromulch is what it makes me thing of. Did it look like this:

Anian

No, it looked like fine regular dry mulch when it was put down, the truck had a big tube. Looked fine for the first few months. It was something like this: Pacific Topsoils Inc. Blower Service

SultanOfSwing

That's a new one on me, it isn't a product we use, but it could also be a regional preference. They probably have to reapply it often, in order to keep the appearance.

MsElui

i see trucks around here in dallas like that a lot, its not hydromulch - its just regular mulch and the 'pipe is about 6 inches wide and just used to deliver the mulch more easily and more quickly - ie to wheelbarrow and spread bags takes forever if you are doing landscaping along a long road for the HOA. being able to effectively walk along with the pipe and blow it out is way faster.

SultanOfSwing

Yeah, but if you do it the other way, you get to charge more

Bob

The missus would love some at work.

She's had a city councillor come by and ask if the company cares about the town at all because they've neglected to do anything about the grass and mulch.

Her response was, they're on the 8th landscape company, from "their" list of recommended local companies, because none of them have ever showed up.

Plus it's a choice of either get new lawn or replace all the pavement edging, that the winter crew completely demolished.

Anyone mention the still demolished entry/exit signs, would probably get punched in the face

Bob

Not if the customer just moves on to another company as they all use the quicker stuff