housewaif-

I to prefer the shredded mulch. We buy ours from Anoka countys' site. You can get a full load for around 20.00. It's much more cost effective, They load it on your trailer with a bobcat. Hope this helps. I'm not sure where you are, but check into your county- they may have something similar.
I'll bet your home is lovely, good luck to you.

$600! Wow!!

I get all mine from the free mulch piles in Minneapolis. It doesn't look as nice as the purchased stuff but I can't complain considering the price. Of course it's a bring your own truck/trailer and load it yourself thing too.

I'll bet the gardens at your new house are beautiful......

Free mulch available at Ramsey County compost sites right now. I was intrigued to see no mulch in most of the 30 gardens I visited in England -- it looked to me like they used compost (if anything). Also free at the compost sites. Compost would be good for your garden and using it would give you another year to think about buying a shredder (maybe with your neighbors?) next year.
My front garden is small so I use expensive cocoa bean mulch because I just don't like the look of lighter, coarser stuff. And then the smallest possible dark wood chips in the back beds.

All wonderful ideas! Thanks! Our county (Dakota) has a site where one can get mulch but it is very expensive for some reason.

I also prefer shredded mulch. But it does break down quickly.

The soil here has been amended for years with good compost and was at one time a cattle yard, so lots of well composted manure underneath it all I would venture to say.

My gardens consist of many oaks, underplanted with hostas
and Endless Summer Hydrangeas. That is all I have ID'd so far. She took quite a few plants with her so I'll have to fill in with new plants. I don't know what she took with her.

I am not very good at planning gardens. For beginners, I think if you've got natural talent then you can muddle through. But I don't and so I am going to have to really struggle with how to fill these gardens in so they look as beautiful as they did when we first saw the house. The gardens are the only reason we bought this house.

It sounds like the whole yard is one grand landscape, but actually it is quite modest. But it is pretty enough that cars stop and look at it and sometimes people get out and wander through the plants. Right now it is mostly hostas and some plants I don't know the names of yet.

We discovered Minnesota Soil Solutions in Cold Spring. They offer shredded pine bark mulch (can't remember the cost off the top of my head). We got several yards last year and I focused on covering the beds near the house and those I could see from the house first.
When the snow had melted I noticed that it had really held up well. They told me it should last 3-4 seasons, and from how things look so far it should last at least that.
It is a very attractive mulch, very dark brown that really contrasts with the green of the plants. I've been very happy with it.

We also have a lot of oaks and borrow a huge mower/bagger every fall to mow the leaves up. It then gets mixed with grass clippings collected from friends. I use this a lot on my gardens as well, however it does not hold up from one year to the next. But it works great for the veggie garden. And really amends the soil nicely (I can tell because the grass two feet out from the gardens is always much greener than the rest of the yard.

Don't worry about planning your gardens too much :) Half the fun of gardening is moving things around. An old gardening friend once told me nothing is ever in the right spot until you've moved it at least 3 times...LOL

Personally I go with the pine needles. I know many people complain about their "acidifying" nature but, I pull them off every year and replace them with free ones from the previous fall. I have a huge pine forest near my home, and it provides me with endless supplies. Plus I like the uniform orange color-so great for contrasting. So if you live near pine trees-give it a thought.

I hadn't heard of cypress mulch being a growth inhibitor-I know lots of people use it because it's cheap and readily available. I have read that cypress mulch producers are harvesting too much of the native cypress 'swamps" to make mulch and that's a bad thing. I didn't really think much about where it came from until I ran across an article online. It seems that a cypress tree is very slow growing and that it's kind of a waste to chop it down just to make mulch. I've always used it but will be switching to something else this year.