h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know there are more appropriate websites where I could ask this, but someone at h2g2 will be able to answer anyway, or will have a good time talking about it even if he doesn't know the answer.

The former owners of my house left flowerbeds around the front and side of the porch, surrounded by nifty decorative border bricks and covered with woodchips. (No flowers left after the winter.) Under the woodchips is a layer of plastic. What is the purpose of that? Do I need to rip that junk out and get down to dirt so I know what I'm dealing with?

What's the purpose of using woodchips in a flowerbed at all? Should I save them?

The wodchips are a form of mulch,they help keep the soil moist and warm
if you have a think enogh layer of mulch you dont need plastic to keep the weeds outs,and the mulch eventually breaks down, so it is also a form of compost

Hel2

The idea, as according to what the manafacturers try to lead the gardening population to believe, is that they help stop weeds growing through. They arn't at all effective at this (my father is a gardner), although, with the membrane underneath it would probably help. I can't imagine it helps the health of the soil that much, and I'd say you should get rid of it, providing you don't mind doing a bit of weeding... Unless of course you like th elook of the stuff, which I don't, I think its quite horrible The local councils and some organisations use it, thinking it will lower maintance, but they useually cut corners by not using membrane, so the weeds just come up anyhow, and the wood chippings get in teh way of weeding...

You normally see the polythene membrane used in conjunction with gravel to produce "zero-maintenance" beds; the idea is to cut small Xs in the polythene and push stiff-stemmed plants such as roses or small shrubs through them into the soil, which will then grow free of weeds which can't get any light or water through the polythene. The gravel holds the polythene down and looks better than the bare sheeting. I'm guessing that your predecessors pulled up the plants and took them with them, and the woodchip was just cheaper than gravel...

I don't think it looks very attractive at all. IN fact most of the gardens they do on those makeover programmes look pretty unnatural and ugly to me. Weeds are more attractive than woodchip IMHO.

Deidzoeb, if you want to plant flowers I would take up the plastic and add some compost to the soil. Good old sphagnum peat makes an acceptable, inexpensive mulch and can be turned into the soil next year.

If you plan on planting shrubs in that area, I would leave the plastic and chips and plant through them.

In my experience, if one weeds before mulching and then puts on a thick enough layer of mulch (2"+), it can cut down on the amount of weeking you'll have to do later. I've always felt a neatly mulched bed looked rather finished and nice, but then I've grown up with that.

Plastic can work and work *very* well, but it's a bit hard to put into established flowerbeds. For instance, there's no way I could stick plastic around some of the rather huge alzalia bushes I have behind my house.

There's more than one kind of membrane used, too. One kind is black, and woven from tiny strips of plastic. This stuff stops light getting at the soil and discourages weeds, but it lets water and air through to keep your plants healthy. The wood chips are then used to cover it because it's ugly (although some people think the chips don't improve matters much).

You can also use gravel to cover it.

This stuff works OK if you're planting shrubs, but it's not so good for perennials or self-seeding annuals, since things can only grow where holes are poked in it, so that herbaceous plants can't spread to fill the bed.

A contract gardener used it in a couple of beds in my garden, but while I haven't taken it out yet, I don't use it in beds I've done myself.

Hed

Sorry, but the term 'contract gardner' just caught my eye, the seedy underbelly of the gardning world, it's not all Alan Titchmarsh you know

One of the things about an unprotected garden is that yes you get the weeds, but you also have the constant surprise of other plants growing that you didn;t put there! The puzzle of 'what the L is that?' as it takes over the flower bed, or just sits there looking pretty. Although I can;t talk myself since my garden is approx 15 feet by 10 feet and half paved / half grass. Which i am going to dig up if I ever get round to it!

My gardening time is limited, and it used to take me all of it to cut and edge the lawns front an rear. Two summers ago I had the rear paved and decked with a new walls and a few raised beds, which is where the contract gardener came in. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse!

I have been using the time saved by not having the rear lawn to mind to gradually replace a lot of the front lawn with various beds: shrubs, herbaceous, prickly things to stop people taking shotcuts and so on.

Eventually the front lawn will just be a 20 foot circle, a big green dot.

Hed

Wood chips are an excellent slug-repellant - slugs don't care to crawl over it

"wood chips are an escellant slug repellant" Not in my experience. In Canada, they crawl under them and keep on going. Wood chips here are used to contain mousture, cut down on weeds and they are supposed to look good. Wwell as a part time proffessional gardener who has had to maintain other gardener's initdial mistakes, I hate them, Imagine trying to do Fall cleanup in aaa country which is notorious for leaf rakeing. Rakeing leaves through wood chips is almost impossible. When planting, one digs into the ground, into dirt, putds the new plant in and then tries to ammalgamate the dirt with the chips just so it still looks OK. Faar too much work and detail (unless one has nothing else to do) Aat present, I'm working in a garden where there are wood chips everywhere and I would like to blow them all away! (Unfortunately, I have to be diplomatic with my client and work with the former landscaper's stupidity Kasese