MULCH &
ROCK BEDS. — Mulch & Rock Bed Installation, Lakeville MN — Lofton Landscaping, serving Lakeville, Savage, Prior Lake, Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Farmington and Eagan.

A sharp spade-cut edge is the single highest-impact thing you can do to a planting bed, and it's the part most often skipped because it doesn't photograph as obviously as fresh mulch. A clean four-inch trench edge separates bed from lawn visually, physically stops turf runners from creeping in, and holds mulch inside the bed where you paid to put it.

Plastic and metal edging both have their place, but neither one beats a properly cut trench for the look. Edging strips heave in Minnesota freeze-thaw and end up standing proud of the ground in a couple of years, which is worse than nothing.

We re-cut edges every spring as part of bed maintenance. It's a small job that makes the whole property read as maintained.

Hardwood mulch breaks down over two or three years, which is a feature: it feeds the soil and improves structure as it goes. That makes it the right choice around anything you actually want to grow — perennials, shrubs, young trees. The cost is that it needs topping up, and on a slope it floats away in heavy runoff.

River rock never breaks down, so it never feeds anything — which is exactly why it's right for foundation strips, drip lines, drainage runs and slopes where mulch would wash into the street. It also means a rock bed is close to permanent, so the bed shape has to be right the first time.

The wrong-headed version, which we see constantly, is rock installed around plants that wanted mulch. The soil underneath compacts, nothing feeds it, and the plants slowly decline while the bed looks fine. We'll tell you which one your specific bed wants, even when it's the cheaper option.

Mulch goes down at two to three inches. Less and weeds get light; more and you're suffocating roots and holding water against stems. On a re-mulch we'll pull off old matted material rather than layering onto it, because six inches of accumulated mulch is a genuine problem, not a well-maintained bed.

Landscape fabric gets used where it earns its place — under rock, in a foundation strip, under a path. In an active planting bed it's usually a mistake: it blocks the organic matter you want reaching the soil, and within two years weeds are rooting in the mulch on top of it anyway.

And mulch never touches the trunk. Piling it into a cone against the bark — the 'mulch volcano' you see on half the commercial properties in the metro — holds moisture against the trunk, invites rot and encourages girdling roots. We pull it back a few inches and leave the flare visible.