Gold Bar is a foothill town on the Skykomish. The river is the flood story, and the banks above it are rock and thin soil. Spring water comes down the cuts fast, and a lawn or a driveway that ignores that ends up as a channel. 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 98251 · 2020 population 1,918
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 Gold Bar
Lots here are not the flat rectangles of Marysville. Driveways climb, yards step down toward the river or the highway, and the native ground is rocky enough that a shovel stops early. When the river runs high, low ground remembers it. We do not put a finished lawn or a bark bed in a spot that has carried water.
What works is straightforward: rock and retaining where the bank is moving, gravel on the steep drive, and a drain that has a real outlet instead of a hole filled with hope. Plantings stay rugged. A manicured hedge is a maintenance bill in a town that gets the mountain rain. Cleanup is often storm debris and alder coming in from the edge of the clearing.
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 Gold Bar
- Yard cleanup in Gold Bar
- Landscape design in Gold Bar
- Tree and shrub pruning in Gold Bar
- Beauty bark in Sultan
- Beauty bark in Index
- Beauty bark in Monroe
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.
