Using Mulch & Stone to help Drainage and Irrigation

Throughout the greater Milwaukee area, precipitation varies in any given month. Sometimes, southeast Wisconsin homeowners have too much water, and have to contend with a variety of drainage issues on their properties. Fortunately, proper grading and the right Milwaukee landscape mulch can help property owners to intelligently manage groundwater problems. Other times, gardens and yards could use a little more water. Here are a few tips for fine-tuning drainage and irrigation using wood and stone mulch. Continue reading →

Cream City River Rock 1 x 1/2 inch

Your backyard is your sanctuary. It’s often the first place to which you escape when the weather cooperates with your hectic schedule. A place this special is worth sharing with close family and friends. Enhancing your yard with the right landscaping stones is the perfect way to create a welcoming outdoor living space. Here are three things to consider when selecting landscaping stones for your yard.

#1 Function of Your Landscaped Space

If your home sits on a large lot, you’ll want to use landscape design techniques to build unique “rooms” within the space. A popular example of this is using landscape stone to connect your home’s existing barbecue patio to an outdoor fireplace that’s surrounded by contemporary outdoor furnishings. For this space, you can’t go wrong with flat stone pavers that add a clean, sleek look to your yard.

If you want to use landscape stones to highlight natural features in your yard, you might consider adding lava rock to your design. Lava rock is an excellent material to define and decorate pathways and plant beds. This landscape stone is made from volcano magma and comes in red, black, and brown colors. The volcanic stone protects plants from excessive heat or cold, aids against soil erosion, and effectively blocks weed growth. You can use it to replace gravel on walkways, and it’s also a superior substitute for mulch around prized trees and shrubs.

#2 Yard Size and Configuration

Flagstone, boulders, and river rocks are other types of stones that you can use within your landscape design. Depending on the size and layout of your stones, you can make a small area look more spacious and a sprawling one appear cozier. For instance, installing large flagstone pavers in your yard will make the area feel wider. If you lay down cobblestones or river rocks in your outdoor living area, you can create a more intimate space. Placing natural stone pavers in distinct patterns also adds visual interest. Draw the eyes to a special feature in your yard such as a fire pit, pergola, or water fountain by installing landscape stones in certain sizes and patterns.

#3 Your Home’s Design

You can find landscape stones that look great whether your home has a traditional or contemporary design. Using cobblestones on garden paths that surround a Spanish Revival home adds character to your property. Pair rugged boulders with smooth river rocks to make a home with a minimalist, modern design mesh with its natural surroundings. The contrasting textures of these two stones also make the outdoor space look more appealing.

The Wrap Up

It’s no secret that the right landscaping stones from Melvin Mulch can make yards look well-defined, polished, and elegant. However, these stones should also support the outdoor area’s function. Whether you want to create a winding stone path that leads to a secret garden or carve out a space to plant hearty herbs near your outdoor kitchen, these tips for choosing landscaping stones will help you to achieve your vision.

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Gardeners and landscapers in southeast Wisconsin can benefit from using mulch for their garden and landscaping needs. Mulch is an asset to any environment where plants are growing. It has an anti-weeding effect, which can assist the process of cultivating vegetables and other landscaping plants. However, the amount of mulch used may affect the outcome.

How Much Mulch?

The question of how much mulch to use should also be considered in the context of the type of mulch selected. Remember that each type of mulch has unique properties, which will interact with the plants. Once you select the type of mulch, you will also need to figure out how much to use. Melvin Mulch’s mulch calculator can help you to determine this amount. Continue reading →

Last time, we covered “Four Tips for Using Garden Mulch Wisely This Spring”. This time we move from the garden to general landscaping. We’ll show how a time-tested multitasker, landscape mulch is a popular pick with professional and amateur landscapers for a multitude of reasons. After all, using it is a fantastic way to protect the soil, enhance the health of your plants, control weeds and add aesthetic appeal to your outdoor spaces without a lot of effort or expense. How can you get the most out of your mulch this spring? Here are four tips to show you: Continue reading →

Spring is an amazing time for spending hours in your garden. After many months spent cooped up in your house throughout the long winter months in Wisconsin, now is the time that you can finally enjoy some fresh air, bright sunlight and some dirt under your fingernails. While early spring may not be the right time for planting many of your new seeds and bulbs or transplanting your perennials or vegetables into your garden, it is the right time to get the garden ready for what is to come.

Although mulch is certainly not the prettiest thing in your garden, it serves a vital role of covering delicate plant roots, keeping weeds at bay, adding organic matter to the soil and keeping moisture in during the drier periods that are sure to happen during the summer. These four tips will help you know just what you should do with the old mulch that may still be layered over your garden from last year and how you should use new garden mulch this spring: Continue reading →

It’s well known that southeast Wisconsin residents face many challenges when maintaining their properties. Effective landscaping requires a lot of effort throughout the year if you want to achieve superior outcomes. Using stone mulch rather than the traditional wood variety has several upsides. Here are seven benefits of using stone mulch for landscaping purposes: Continue reading →

Gardeners know why they mulch in the growing season. Mulch keeps the ground cool during the hot months, helps retain moisture and smothers weeds. As organic mulch breaks down, it puts nutrients into the soil. But why would anyone mulch around a plant or tree during the winter when nothing much is happening? Here are some reasons:

Protection From the Weather

People mulch in the winter for much the same reason they mulch in spring and summer. The mulch protects the roots of the plant from the weather. Mulch regulates the temperature of the soil during the winter and prevents frost heaving. This is when the soil freezes and thaws and actually lifts the top of the roots out of the ground. This exposes them to frost, which can kill the plant even if the rest of the plant can stand a bit of frost. If the area gets a lot of rain in the winter, mulch keeps the soil from being washed away. Mulch also keeps a plant dormant by keeping the ground cold during a warm snap. Mulch applied in late winter also stops weed seeds from sprouting in the spring. Continue reading →

The Midwest experiences a range of seasons throughout the year. By the time the summer and fall comes around, the outdoor landscape has gone through substantial weathering due to temperature and precipitation. If a property was built on a foundation like clay, the grass may be under water during rainy parts of the year, or the substantial rain we just had. Deciding on whether to use wood mulch or stone for landscaping largely depends on the goals for the end result and the nature of the property. Continue reading →

Landscaping and gardening around your home is a wonderful way to improve its aesthetic appeal. Unfortunately, there is often a lot of maintenance required to keep plants, trees and shrubs watered during the hotter months of the year. One way to prevent the need for continuously watering and cleaning the garden or landscape is to make use of bark mulch. Mulch is an ideal addition to any home or business garden and has a myriad of benefits that will not only save you time, but save water and money as well.

How it Saves Water

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If you have a garden or plan to start one, you are likely wondering what you can do to improve the quality and health of your garden, which is understandable. You can take several steps to reach your goal, but not all of the things you will try are equal. Adding the right garden mulch to your soil will give you plenty of great benefits if you are serious about getting the most from your effort. You will be thrilled as soon as you see the difference. Review the following top advantages you can get when you use mulch so that you can choose the path that makes sense for you.

Mulch Combats Weeds

Weeds are a common enemy of those who enjoy growing gardens in their yards, causing several issues you need to address if you don’t wish to face unneeded threats. Inability to control and combat a weed problem will destroy your progress and harm your results. Weeds will steal sunlight from your flowers or vegetables, but they will also consume nutrients and cause other issues you want to avoid. You can buy mulch if you would like a safe and effective way to fight weeds and keep them at bay. Once your plants sprout, spread a 2-inch layer of mulch on your soil to enjoy the benefits, and the weeds won’t have a chance. Your garden mulch will stop them from getting sunlight, doing wonders to keep them out of your garden for good. Continue reading →