I like wood chips. They're free, organic, readily decompose, suppress weeds, support healthy soil life, and are fairly soft under foot.

I went with cedar wood chips in hopes of deterring the ticks rampant in that area of my yard. Seemed to work!

I'm trying straw this year... hoping it keeps the mud tracking to a minimum and also give a consistent look. I'm not sold on it yet though... it seems to blow all over the place. Last year I used all my bagged grass and shredded leaves and it worked really well.

My understanding is that newspaper is used as a layer under soil. I'm looking for something as a top layer, to be walked on.

I used cardboard as the layer under the beds themselves.

You're right. A layer of soil is normally placed on top of the newspaper. The purpose of the soil is partly to keep the newspaper down and prevent it from flying off. In my case I plan to place a few large rocks to hold the newspaper down instead of layer of soil.

Wood chips can be gotten free often and work well, hell most tree guys would be happy to dump them in your driveway for free.

I contacted a few local tree guys, and they basically said they won't bother unless I need at least 10 yards or more

IMO that may be a lot of wood chips but if you have the room you can use some of it for the garden and just do an extra thick layer (it will add more organic matter to the soil and will lessen the amount that you have to store elsewhere) and pile it up somewhere and whenever something pops up where it might be helpful liberally use it. 10 yards of wood chips IS a lot but I feel like I could use it all up pretty quickly. get creative and you might find it paying dividends.

Dawson

I'm getting 2 full truck loads this year. I'm not sure of your climate, but if you plan ahead, the first year you use chips you can get a truck load before the trees leaf out to use on walkways, and a 2nd load with leaves shredded into the chips. The second load will compost on its own, and 6 mons. to a year later you sift the pile and get yards and yards of both excellent compost, and chips for the next season.

I have an expanding garden, and am sifting last year's chips now. The larger chips that haven't broken down go onto the paths. The compost is used for my seedling transplanting, and in the garden. The finer chips become a base for composting whatever greenery (grass clippings, leaves off of prunings, etc...) is made throughout the summer.

In short, if you have the space, 10 yards of chips is one of the best resources a gardener can have.

I'm able to get wood chips delivered and I can pick them up for free. It's a great source of material. Here's the last load I got. I also dig a lil deeper for the composted stuff, after you sift it, it's good stuff.

So if you can store it, go for it.

I use wet newspapers covered with grass clippings. I would probably use wood chips if I was sure they weren't contaminated with Japanese knotweed. One year I saw the crew cutting back under power lines and that included a huge stand of knotweed which went into the chipper, too.

Good point about the knotweed

Tree guys were taking down a monster oak directly across the street from me one year ago. Told em I'd take their mulch... all of it. I ended up with about 8 yards. I had no problem using it all on my 1/8 acre city lot. Could use another 8 this year. It went between my raised beds (and everywhere else for that matter). I prefer mulch to straw, which just seems to blow all over the place.