Ditch Wood Chips: The Permanent Mulch Solution That Makes Raised Garden Beds Look Good

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Are the raised garden beds in your yard full of ornamental shrubs, flowers, and ground covers rather than vegetables? Like most gardeners trying to cultivate a beautiful backyard, you're probably using some type of mulch in your beds. Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil and keeps those pesky weeds at bay. While wood chips are a popular — and, arguably, very good — option, they will eventually decompose. Having to constantly replenish your beds with fresh mulch can get tiring, not to mention strain your gardening budget. Would you love a more permanent mulch solution for your ornamental raised garden beds? Pea gravel will likely last for a number of years, and it looks great to boot.

Pea gravel is smooth and round, so water moves through it easily instead of pooling on the surface and drowning your plants. It's a great long-term mulch for herbs and flowering perennials that love drier conditions, as well as succulents and cacti. Pea gravel also comes in a wide range of colors, including gray, brown, white, black, and more. This means you can pick the perfect pea gravel color for your landscaping, adding a pleasing aesthetic element to your garden design. You can also use pea gravel to create walkways around your raised beds, whether you're growing vegetables or ornamentals. It keeps weeds at bay and allows you to move around your garden easily, even when the ground is wet and muddy. It's how Joanna Gaines uses pea gravel to make her garden pop — she uses the white variety.

To use pea gravel as mulch, remove the top 3 to 4 inches of soil from your raised bed. Lay down some landscape fabric, cutting holes for your plants to grow through. Shovel the pea gravel onto the landscape fabric or use a Gorilla Carts Garden Dump Cart to save yourself the labor. While pea gravel pairs well with established ornamental plants, you probably want to avoid it if you're growing edible crops. Growing vegetables requires a lot of soil disturbance — those carrots and onions will need to be dug up eventually. Every time you drive that gardening fork into the soil, you mix in more pea gravel.

Want to create pea gravel pathways around your raised garden beds? You need to prepare the ground first. This is one of those times when using landscape fabric is not only perfectly acceptable but recommended. It helps prevent weeds from popping up through the gravel. Hold the fabric in place with plenty of landscape staples and add a 3- to 4-inch-deep layer of pea gravel. The added depth prevents you from disturbing the gravel as you push a wheelbarrow or cart around your garden.

Overall, whether it's used inside raised beds as mulch or to create pathways around them, pea gravel requires far less maintenance than wood chips. However, you'll still need to clean and maintain your pea gravel to keep it looking as good as new. Rake it occasionally, especially after heavy rain or use, to keep it at a consistent depth. You may also need to add a thin layer of fresh pea gravel once a year to account for settling. If some gravel works its way into your soil, don't try to pick it out. It improves drainage.