My advice is to let the leaves stay put in your beds and just replenish new mulch every year. The leaves will decompose and help the organic matter content

Bressler, I agree with you one hundred percent about Live Oaks.....it's crazy how they are over planted! They aren't even pretty until they reach a ripe old age. Yes, they are always dropping something!

Mulch will always be better for the trees and other plants than stone.

Have you ever considered adding solid groundcover to what is now a mulched area? ... So that in time, as plants cover the area, there comes an end to adding mulch. Rooted plants don't blow out of the ground like mulch does. (Gravel does, too.)

I let the leaves stay and only remove them to let seeds sprout. I see them as mulch. Stone mulch is a hassle. Everything germinates in it. I don't mind a messy garden so take my opinion for what it is worth.

Anything organic that falls on my beds is considered mulch. In my area, rocks sink so I’d never use it as mulch.

After 25 years of laying down shredded hardwood mulch in our beds, this year we made the switch to mulching with mostly live oak leaves (along with pine needles and silver maple leaves -- whatever we grabbed from neighborhood lawn bags). We found the hardwood mulch always got too matted/compact, to the point where water didn't penetrate, and our soil was always too dry (which meant many bedding plants just didn't do well).

We purchased a leaf shredder that works quite well to process all the leaves, etc. to a nice, small size. Noisy and dusty as all get out when the machine's running, but so far, so good. We'll never go back to mulching our beds with any other than tree leaves.

The issue with plants planted near oaks is competition by oak roots. Especially in the vicinity of lawns that are regularly watered, the oak roots are shallow. I wouldn't try growing anything under my live oaks. Messy? I get no mess off of mine. If your live oaks are losing a lot of leaves, they have a problem.

Beautiful yard, dchall.

Live oak is the number one tree on which Spanish moss grows. If you have that, it's messy in the extreme, constantly dropping moss and twiggery with it. After a storm comes. nearly a whole layer of moss will be on the lawn.

At least Live oaks don't "self trim" like pecan trees. I am amazed at the wind these long twisty branches can take without breaking.

Well, I see there's not a whole lot of fans of the rock idea... I may try it anyway as there's other folks in the neighborhood that have. It hasn't seemed to affect the trees.

I'm anal about leaves getting in my mulch bed, so hence the idea.

I think my Live Oak is pretty healthy, but I still don't like the leaf drop in the spring, making a second raking season, the heavy pollen drop and acorns when we have a mast year like last year. Plus, the leaves are a booger to rake being small and they don't break down quickly. Different strokes and all... Not my favorite tree in the world in case it's not obvious.

Really. Don’t try the rock. It will show the leaves, twigs and pollen even more than the mulch does. Weeds will want to grow in it, and rocks make them difficult to remove and they need to be removed, even if small, because they will stand out against the rocks also. Rocks tend to want to sink into the soil, but if you put landscape fabric under the rock to prevent that, it isn’t healthy for the tree. And once you have spent the money on the rock and hauled it in place, to then remove it and find of a way to get rid of it can be daunting.

Before doing the work, find folks who have had it in place at least several years. Ask them about maintenance and look at how healthy (or not) their plants are. Mulches of organic material are what occur naturally under trees and what they are adapted for. You don’t say where you are, but in most parts of the US, rock mulch is a real hassle to maintain, far more so that shredded bark mulch. Adding a ground cover so that the leaves disappear into it may be a good solution for you.

Huge uptick on how much round up is needed to keep the seedlings at bay and the rock looking neat.

Alright, you guys beat me down. I guess I'll just resign myself to having to re-mulch every year to compensate to the stuff that gets blown away.

Just so rock, gravel and decomposed granite don't get totally slammed as alternatives to organic mulch, they can be a fine choice for species that prefer to stay on the dry side, especially if the mulch comes in contact with the collar/trunk. Cactus, leucophyllum et al. would not usually be sited under leaf-dropping trees. Be sure to choose a neutral color. Few things are as visually painful as the Texas sun reflecting off white rock.

Does pachysandra do well as a groundcover in Central Texas? I've never tried it.

He also included Landscape design forum on his thread so that respondent might not be from Central Texas.

I wonder what the heat tolerances are.

To be pedantic, the upper end of a range like that is meaningless since the USDA growing zones are only a measure of an area’s coldest winter temperature and have nothing to do with summer temperatures or their duration or precipitation or any of the other cultural factors that influence plant health. The only time an upper end might be appropriate would be for a plant that requires winter cold for flowering and fruit, though since the zones don’t measure duration of cold, only depth, it isn’t even applicable there. It gets used widely as baileysr indicated, but that doesn’t make it a good indicator. For instance, I imagine that pachysandra does just fine in zone 8 in WA. That said, I doubt that Pachysandra will grow well in the hotter and drier parts of TX, particularly without 100% shade and frequent watering, and I am not sure how flexible it is as to the often alkaline pH of TX soils. And pachysandra just isn’t attractive enough plant to waste that much water on. :>)

Thank you for the clarification. I actually had my hopes up for pachysandra. It does so well in the Mid-South. Of course, that usually means it's too good to be true for Austin.

Irving ragweed, if you aren’t familiar with Pam Penick’s blog and books, she is an Austin gardening author who might be a good resource for you.

http://www.penick.net/digging/?page_id=17911

Thank you, Babs. The name does ring a bell, though I'm inclined more toward the Scott Ogden school of landscaping.

Scott Ogden spoke at Pam Pennick's house earlier this year. LOL.

I trust he set her straight once and for all. j/k

Seriously, after killing every plant I brought with me from the Mid-South, I cut my gardening teeth for this region on Wasowski and Ogden before blog entered the lexicon. I'm still old school in that I prefer books to blogs. I've let Santa know I want Penick's books. She has yet to stuff my stocking with them.

I almost sprung for that $20

I give a Wasowski book along with some free natives to every friend that is a fresh arrival and likes to garden ..

I like to garden. What qualifies as "fresh arrival"?

Not someone who says he cut his Texas gardening teeth before the era of blogs . I am all out of Wasoski books right now.

My Wasowski is first edition; jumped on it as soon as it hit the bookstores. I have never upgraded to second edition, so take pity.

Me too. I gave my first edition away when I got the second edition given to me.My first edition was falling apart. I used it A LOT.I have since had a couple of people give me their first editions who I have found willing recipients for. I don't think I have ever seen a SW book in a used book store in Texas. They get used and gifted around. I am sorry for getting off topic.

Everybody else: 1, Bressler: 0

Omar

No, he came around to an alternate point of view . . . There are some folks who ask and then ignore all the advice they get, but Bressler was willing to listen to advice. So I think this is a case of everybody wins.

Just echoing what NHBabs and others have said about the rocks. We have an area that was graveled by previous owners, and another that used larger rocks, maybe 1" to 2". It is a constant source of weeds, and the leaves are impossible to remove each fall. It always looks bad unless from a distance. Attractive plants don't like it, but the weeds manage to eek out an existence, even though from a weed's point of view they don't look their best, either. We have seen a local place that uses some type of large oblong smooth rock, maybe dimensions of 4" x 3" x 1", kind of a flat egg shape, and it is beautiful. But, they have extensive funds for maintenance so it is pristine. You can remove large leaves from on top of rocks, but there's a heck of a lot of leaf particles (far more than full-size leaves) that love to get stuck and settle in the rocks/gravel.