Since I'm new to gardening I've been experimenting with various mulches. Here's what I've found so far: 1. Compost works really well and is great for the soil, but is expensive in large quantities and if animals dig through it then it mixes with the soil (good) but then you have lost the protection you wanted from the mulch in the first place (bad). I finally gave up on this after trying to patch holes every day. 2. Pine bark chips look great, but are very expensive around here and of course are not so good around smaller plants. They last longer but I am not sure the extra life offsets the extra cost. The larger pieces also means light gets through more, and I have found that I have had to do more weeding in the pine-bark beds than my other mulched beds. Animals can root through them easily too, but at least they are easy to move to cover up the holes. 3. Wood pallets shredded into chips (Scotts brand colored mulch) seem ok with weed suppression and also seem to have decent longevity, showing very little sign of degrading after a summer and winter. However, I do find that they seem to get moved out of place by small animals quite easily, and need constant adjustment or a bit of refilling. I'm also leery about using these recycled wood pallets. 4. Shredded leaves are free which is nice, but only available in the fall. it also looks really, really messy and so I wasn't happy with it. I can't speak to it's effectiveness because I didn't keep it around, but I hear it's good. 5. Shredded cedar, natural color. The mulch mats which means it stays in place and acts as an excellent barrier but it doesn't always look so nice. The fresh color is a rich brown but it quickly fades to a less attractive, yellowish woody color. The soil underneath I find tends to stay the most moist, and this spring the soil seems richer and fluffier than from under the pine chips or the shredded pallet chips. 6. Shredded cedar, dyed black. This mulch seems to have the same advantages of the other shredded cedar, but the black color (IMO anyway) looks far, far better. Even when faded to a sort of black-grey from a distance it looks more like rich, black earth and creates a really bold contrast to the colors of my plants. This is what I will go with from now on, unless I discover too many horrible things about the black dye. This post was edited by ptwonline on Wed, May 15, 13 at 13:55

Wow, thanks for all the great feedback. My goals for mulching are 1) retain moisture and (mostly) 2) suppress weeds. We moved into some wooded acreage a few years ago, and hubby created a 20'x30' flower garden with beautiful black swamp dirt - loaded with weed seeds. Even though I've sprayed with herbicide (over a dozen times), used gallons of Preen and pulled weeds till my hands hurt, I can't keep ahead of those hardy weeds. Last year I put down a thick layer of wood chips, hoping to stop them. The weeds laughed, and I again have a bumper crop. Last weekend I spent two full days digging them out by hand, root & all. Hopefully that'll help? BTW, the "expert" was featured in the most recent issue of "This Old House". I just figured he knew more than I - which unfortunately for him, isn't saying much. :P

Another option is floating row crop cover. It is a woven white fabric that comes in a variety of weights and widths. It provides a couple of degrees of protection, which isn't alot but is critical at those times of the year (spring and fall) when it's above freezing during the day, but it dips down below freezing at night. I cut all my herbaceous perennials to about 2-4 inches tall after everything freezes, and drape the floating row cover over the beds. I either tuck in the edges or use landscape fabric staples to secure it down. One of the great advantages to row crop cover is that it allows some light transmittance (the heavier the fabric, the more frost protection but the less light transmitted) and it allows water to pass in. So, I can leave it on into the middle of May if frosts keep occurring at night, but the plants can grow during the day. I've also wrapped it around shrubs to help increase their chance of survival, and to prevent moose browse. This might not work well in areas where you get a lot of wind, or where you get lots of heavy snow or freezing rain--the fabric might trap alot of snow/ice and get too heavy and break off branches or tip the whole plant. Another nice thing is that you can cover the row crop cover with extra mulching material for added protection. Cover the top of the cover with straw, leaves, whatever, and you can just brush it off in the spring, or roll up the row crop cover and all the mulch is quickly removed. No careful raking and pulling in the spring. Emily in sunny Fairbanks

Thank you all. There's a lot to learn from your comments. I live in an urban residential area and, while I wish I can use some of the creative organic solutions with manure, I'm afraid it's not possible for me given the proximity of our lots. That said, I'm encouraged to learn that horse manure is less smelly because we can get it for free in our area. Great to hear that many of you are using leaves and I keep scratching my head why I haven't thought of it sooner instead of wasting on their cleanup and collection. It sounds that roses are not too selective about the mulch material which will make it fun and interesting to experiment by rotating between them. The only trouble is that whatever decomposes faster and amends the soil also encourages weeds, but underplanting our roses more densely with perennials might be the way to control it.