I doubt that your animal shelter would care that this donation of free litter clumped or not. Whether this is something you would want to add to your soil or not would depend on what type os soil you have. If what you have is clay this is probably not something you would want to add, but if sand there is that possibilty that you could.

The county yard waste facility does not separate leaves from branches. I *could* get the leaves from them. But it would be at least 50% coarse wood chips, which are worse than useless since they both use nitrogen as they decay AND hold even larger air spaces in the soil than the unadulterated sand. They don't even call the stuff compost. They call it mulch and mulching paths is all its good for. The pine straw that I have in great abundance is far superior as a mulch for trees and landscape plantings and even in parts of the garden. But its just as useless as a soil amendment since resinous, 8-12-inch pine needles don't decompose any faster than coarse wood chips. When I lived in Massachusetts I had leaves in overwhelming abundance and they worked splendidly in the sandy soil (technically unsorted glacial till), I had there. This sand here is far different geologically being closer to washed-quartz play-sand than to the richer glacial till, ecologically with few deciduous trees, and climatologically with months on end of hot, humid weather burns organic material out of the soil with tremendous speed -- after 3 months I can barely detect any difference between the sections of garden where DH tilled in an inch of compost (all we had), and the fresh areas. Which is why I was inquiring about adding clay via cat litter because what worked in other places I've lived is either unavailable or less effective here. :-)

Thanks guys. I bought some of the garden soil yesterday before I read your replies but I'm returning it tomorrow and buying the soil conditioner like y'all advised. Is there a difference in the one at Lowes (Scotchman's brand I think) and the HD one (nature's helper)? I ask because the HD one comes in 1.5 cubic ft. while the other is 2 cubic feet. Just looking to get more bang for my buck. I'm going to use pine straw to mulch the bed. There are two pine trees in my front yard that are dropping needles anyway, so putting anything else down would be silly on my part. But not quite as ridiculous as dumping a truckload of gravel on the beds without any concern for the integrity of the soil or the next homeowner who has to spend many hours of back breaking tedious work to dig it all out after it has spent many years sinking into the ground! ...Sorry about the rant, can you tell how much I hate the gravel heehee. Are there any other amendments I should add? I purchased a bag of MOO-nure also for some added goodness(the store didn't have Black Kow). In case you need some info: the soil is going to be slightly rocky since I won't be able to get out all the gravel, besides that it appears to be kinda sandy on the top layer and as I dig deeper it appears more yellowish orange, almost like there could be some clay. I'm going to plant some dwarf gardenias in that area along with some tulip bulbs and some annuals for now. Thanks in advance!

IMHO Clay needs to be mixed in with sand. I use landscaping grade calcium benonite clay which has been made into very fine granules. When it is added to the sand and water added, it needs to be worked into the soil which then breaks up into very fine particles that hold moisture. If you leave it over the surface of the soil the clay will just stick to your footwear when you walk over it and it will cake and not hold moisture in the sand down below. I did try drenching with clay-water mix once but the clay still wanted to sit on top of the soil and it was very messy. You can force it into the sand with a high pressure water jet but I found from personal experience the physical mixing with a shovel created the best soil mixing and most quickly as well. It is definitely a work out though - once the clay is mixed in and water added the soil is very heavy and does not move the same way as light sandy soil.