New mulch experience....

In getting my garden beds ready for the Annual Garden Club Garden Tour, which  I am on this year.... I decided to experiment with mulching some beds that I usually don't mulch.

I have been purchasing a really nice mini pine chip mulch, I find at Gerten's in Inver Grove Heights,  to use in mulching my Fairy Gardens and containers for several years.  This year when I picked up a new bag I had a sudden urge to try mulching my mini hosta bed with it.  I figured the pine chips not only will look great, hold in moisture and reduce weeds but certainly break down easily and end up improving my clay soil.   (I do not mulch hostas  because I don't like the usual mulch material working its way into the base of the hosta plants.)  So, I picked up a few more bags to try!  

Yep, it looks great...…  and I ended up going back for more and mulching a few more garden beds that I don't usually mulch!  Love the look!  Time will tell what it does for the soil, etc.

This hosta bed features smaller hostas which get lost in a bed with the big ones!  To add interest I tuck in some dwarf size shade perennials along with a touch of garden art to match the scale.

Note the dwarf  Solomens Seal in the back, larger plant by the Angel is a dwarf Goats Beard and the right of the center gold hosta is a dwarf Thalictrum and edging the bottom of the picture is some Irish Moss.