Darrington sits up against the Cascades, with Whitehorse Mountain on the skyline and a harder rain than the towns down on the flats. Soils run rocky, lots break off into steep cuts, and water does not sheet across a lawn so much as it cuts a track and takes the soil with it. Bark on a steep cut washes to the bottom of the hill in the first big rain. We mulch beds that are level enough to hold it.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98241 · 2020 population 1,358
Bark on the flat beds, not on a slide
Around the house, on the benches, bark is the right finish after a cleanup. On the bank we plant or we use rock. A fresh brown slope looks good for a week and then it is in the ditch.
Wind and drip at the timber edge break bark down fast. We tell you it is an annual top-up, not a ten-year surface. Anyone who sells it as permanent is selling the first photograph.
The ground in Darrington
This is a small town with mountain weather. A wall that would be decorative in Mill Creek is structural here: it is holding a bank that wants to move every winter. We see shallow, rocky ground, overhanging fir and hemlock, and driveways that wash out where the grade dumps onto the road.
Planting lists shrink to what can handle cold, wet, and poor soil. Huckleberry and mountain hemlock already grow on the edges of these properties. A lawn is possible on the flatter bench of a lot, but it needs seed and soil that can take a short season, not a turf schedule copied from Everett. Cleanup is often about limbs over the roof and ditches that have filled with gravel from the bank above.
How we do the work
Bark is a blanket, not a cleanup. We pull the weeds and the old matted layer that has turned into soil, edge the bed so the bark has a place to stop, and put down enough depth to block light. A sprinkle that still shows dirt is not a bark job. It is a way to pay for the same weeds in June.
We keep bark off the crowns of shrubs and off the trunks of trees. A volcano of mulch against the bark of a tree is how the trunk rots. Two to three inches across the soil, pulled back at the stems.
What we look at first
- Whether the old bark has composted into a weed bed
- The edge against the lawn
- Plants that are buried already
- How far the truck can get the load
Depth
About three inches after it settles, less against the stems, none against the trunk. One inch looks like a lot in the wheelbarrow and does nothing by July. We would rather do a smaller bed correctly.
How often
Top up every year or two, an inch or so, once the first depth is right. Starting over every spring means the first job was thin or the bed was never weeded. We would rather be on a light top-up.
Old fabric
Landscape fabric under bark is where weeds root in the dust on top, and where water sheets off. When we find it, we take it out if the bed is weedy. We do not sell a new layer of it.
More from this crew
- Beauty bark across Snohomish County
- Lawn weed control in Darrington
- Yard cleanup in Darrington
- Landscape design in Darrington
- Tree and shrub pruning in Darrington
- Beauty bark in Granite Falls
- Beauty bark in Arlington
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
