Mulch, Aeration & Pruning Services

Mulch is sold and installed by the cubic yard. One yard covers about 100 square feet at three inches deep, and installed with edging and cleanup runs roughly $75 to $120 per yard depending on material and how far it has to be carried. A typical suburban front-and-side bed layout takes four to eight yards.

Core aeration on a quarter-acre lot generally runs $150 to $300, and overseeding on top of it adds $200 to $450 depending on seed. Pruning is quoted by the job rather than the hour, because the honest variable is how long the shrubs have been left, not how many there are.

• Hardwood mulch. The workhorse. Breaks down into the soil and feeds it, needs topping up annually. Best value for most beds.
• Pine bark and pine straw. Lighter, acidic as it breaks down, and the traditional look here. Pine straw is cheap and fast on slopes where bark would wash.
• Dyed mulch. Holds colour a full season. Purely cosmetic and it adds nothing to the soil, which is a fine trade if colour is what you want.

Three inches is the number. Less than two does not suppress weeds or hold moisture; more than four starts shedding water instead of absorbing it and can suffocate shallow roots. Beds that get topped up every spring without anyone removing the old layer end up six or eight inches deep, which is a slow way to kill the plants it was meant to protect.

The most common and most damaging mistake is the mulch volcano — mulch piled in a cone against a tree trunk. Bark is not root; kept wet and buried it rots, insects move in, and the tree girdles itself with roots that circle in the mulch instead of going into the soil. Pull mulch back two to three inches from every trunk and stem. A tree killed this way takes years to die, so nobody connects the cause to the effect.

Before mulching we edge the beds, pull existing weeds rather than burying them, and break up any crusted old layer so water can pass through it.

Our clay compacts under foot traffic, mowers and its own weight, and compacted soil leaves grass roots with nowhere to go and no air to breathe. Core aeration pulls thousands of plugs of soil out of the lawn, which relieves pressure and opens channels for water, air and seed. Spike aerators, the kind sold as shoe attachments, push soil sideways and make compaction worse.

Leave the cores on the lawn. They look untidy for a week or two and then break down and return to the soil with the thatch they carry. Raking them up throws away half the benefit.

For fescue, aerate and overseed in September or October — the soil is still warm, weed pressure is falling, and the new grass gets three cool seasons to establish before summer. For bermuda, aerate in late spring when it is growing hard. Aerating a dormant lawn does nothing but leave holes.

Timing depends on when the plant sets its flower buds. Shrubs that bloom in spring — azalea, forsythia, most hydrangea varieties grown here — set their buds the previous summer, so cutting them back in winter removes the flowers before they open. Prune those right after they finish blooming. Summer-blooming shrubs and crape myrtle set buds on new growth and are pruned in late winter while dormant.

Crape myrtle deserves its own sentence, because the routine topping done all over this area is not pruning. Cutting the trunks back to stubs each winter produces weak, whippy growth from the wound, a weaker structure every year, and a tree that never develops the bark and shape it is grown for. Thinning and removing suckers and crossing limbs achieves the goal without the damage.

Dead, damaged and crossing wood can come out at any time of year. That is the one rule with no season attached.