House as it looked after completing the rock work
After settling and living at my second house for a couple of months, spring was rapidly approaching, for me, that meant answering the following question: wood or rock mulch around the house?
As you may have read before, when I decided to buy this house, I knew what I was getting into. I knew about everything that needed to be taken care of for it to look the way I wanted. It had potential, but it also needed a lot of work, yes, they were mostly cosmetic upgrades, but it was work nonetheless.
On the list of items that needed attention was the landscape mulch around the house. It was obvious that it had been neglected for a few years, I would go as far as to say that it had not been maintained since the house was built back in 2007. Actually, most of the landscaping had not been taken care of properly, but, to go into details, I would have to write a dedicated post.
As spring approached, weeds started growing here and there. That was a wake-up call! So, considering how bad it looked and anticipating a weed invasion, I decided to take action before it was too late.
DECIDING BETWEEN WOOD OR ROCK MULCH AROUND THE HOUSE
Since I had already completed and was very pleased with the results of my previous landscaping project, I decided to do something similar at the new place.
That meant, removing lots of old wood mulch, or at least what was left of it and the old landscaping fabric where weeds had started growing.
One of the landscape beds as it looked before cleaning it up and spreading the rock
You can clearly see the old landscape fabric on this picture
Before removing what was left of the wood mulch and old landscape fabric
As you can see in the photos, most of the mulch was gone to begin with. I could have just added some extra mulch and be done with it, but the landscape fabric was in really bad shape, the perfect condition for weeds to grow out of control.
There are obviously many pros and cons of using wood or rock mulch. However, the main reason why I decided to go with rocks was because I wanted a more “permanent” solution. It can get very windy here at times, if I added some extra new wood mulch, I was going to have to do the same every year, or at least every two, as a result, it was going to end up costing more in the long run as well.
CLEANING UP, INSTALLING NEW LANDSCAPE FABRIC & SPREADING ROCK
With most of the mulch and old landscape fabric removed, it was time to go ahead and clean up as much as possible before installing the new fabric. At this point I had made about three trips to the earth recycling place, this additional cleaning added an extra trip to the total.
After removing some of the fabric and continuing with the clean up job
Continuing with the clean up job
Once back from the earth recycling place, the next step was installing the new landscape fabric and spreading a total of 12 tons of tricolor 1 ½” river rock. As I’ve said before, it is definitely easier said than done, but the results are most likely well worth the effort.
Installing new landscape fabric and spreading the river rock
Spreading the river rock
First views of the end result, south side of the house
First views of the end result, south side/driveway area
South side, front porch area looking way better now
Weeks later, I replaced the bushes to the left on the last picture with a Red Maple tree, the end result can be seen on the next one. This is a late fall picture.
The house as it looked after completing the rock work
As promised, though, an updated one from the Summer of 2016 is right below.
The house one Summer day in 2016
Replacing your own mulch around the house? This is what you need:
- Screwdrivers and hand tools (always useful)
- Shovel, Bow & leaf rakes
- Landscape fabric, including pins to hold it in place
- River rock
- Wheelbarrow
- Trees as needed
- Decorative concrete blocks (optional, I used them to circle the trees)
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