you might regret something so pervasive ... many of those.. lacey notes.. are easily pulled out.. when they get too far from where you really want them ... clover might not be so easily trainable ... escaping your bed.. crossing the lawn.. and heading 3 neighbors down ... lol also ... i have some such in my former horse pasture.. what i now call a lawn ... along with other things like plantain ... dandilion.. yarrow.. etc ... and the rabbits hit the salad bar of a lawn.. and mostly ignore my garden beds ... you need to find out if it is a rabbit crop.. and not really plant such an attractant.. or you might be calling the rabbits to your beds .... akin to planting 6 packs of beer in your beds.. and wondering why you have all these middle aged men with beer bellies.. hanging around your backyard,... lol ... ken

Thanks! As a hypothetical question, how do wood chips suppress weeds? If I had wood chips, should I be putting down newspaper/cardboard/landscape fabric under them too? I thought they supressed weeds by creating a surface, an upper/top surface, that any seeds that blew onto it couldn't grow on, because the surface was wood. But I wonder if you're saying that the weeds I need to worry about are coming from underneath, up through the mulch? In which case, is there anything about wood chips that stops that better than compost? Like the robbing-nitrogen-from-the-soil stuff I've heard about wood chips?

In my personal experience, chipped leaves are an incredible soil amendment. I like your idea of the layers because the leaf mulch will serve to protect the soil from the wood mulch. By the time the leaf mulch has decomposed or been stolen by earthworms, the wood mulch will probably harmless. Do you know if the wood mulch is aged? I've seen 'fresh' woody mulch at a nursery that was steaming because it was still actively decomposing. When it was applied under shrubbery that had lilies planted underneath, the lilies did not thrive. That same mulch was applied underneath tomato plants the plants struggled until I pulled the mulch away from the plant. Do I need to say that you don't want to till wood mulch into the soil unless you don't want something to grow there? Good luck! Paul

Hi, I know this thread is 6 years old but I wondered if the OP tried mulch etc. And wanted to ask how it worked for them? We have a property with small strip of woodland at the base of Mt Beacon about an hour north of New York City. We've lived here three years. When a tree in the shallow soil on the hill fell over in a storm and smashed our shed, the guys removing the tree did us a "favor" and removed a bunch of the scrubby undergrowth back there. By doing this they appear to have spread poison ivy throughout the area. I'm attacking it here and there by snipping, raking, and a little herbicide, however the whole area is so overgrown it's just hard to tackle it. We have a preschooler and it's actually the only shaded area on our property, so I really would love to make better use of it. The local "natural" landscaping company I hope would help us, keeps not showing up. They came once for an initial consultation, then never followed up, then didn't answer my calls. I actually saw them again recently working on someone else's property. They came over after my neighbor's job, suggested using heavy mulch to get the area under control, then never followed up again! I'm starting to think about going to the city dump and getting load after load of wood chips on my own, and seeing what happens if I weed whack and just try to create a path with the chips. Anyhow my search for ideas brought me to this forum. Open to feedback! On a budget but very much interested in planting native species over time.