{"id":3814,"date":"2026-05-21T09:50:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/?page_id=3814"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:50:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:50:41","slug":"wood-chips","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wood-chips\/","title":{"rendered":"Wood Chips"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>This information supplements the &#8220;Designing your Rain Garden&#8221;\u00a0section of the Rain Garden Manual for Vermont and the Lake Champlain Basin.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The typical approach in a flower bed is to use bark mulch. This can be okay in a rain garden, but is not recommended because bark mulch floats and therefore can be carried away as stormwater runoff enters the rain garden. A better alternative to bark mulch is wood chips. Apply a 2-3 inch layer of wood chips to areas not covered by plants or seeds. A cubic yard of wood chips will cover a 100 square foot area with a layer of about three inches thick.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What&#8217;s the difference between wood chips and bark mulch?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Wood chips: pieces of wood from fallen trees<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bark mulch: consists of shredded pieces of tree bark and organic matter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Supplemental Information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/pss.uvm.edu\/ppp\/articles\/woodchips.html#:~:text=In%20a%201990%20study%20comparing,is%20slowly%20released%20to%20plants.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">This article<\/a>\u00a0by Leonard Perry, UVM Extension\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Wood chip mulch: Landscape boon or bane?&#8221; from the Master Gardener, WSU publication (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/sites\/default\/files\/uploads\/Green_Infrastructure\/wood-chips.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">PDF<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This information supplements the &#8220;Designing your Rain Garden&#8221;\u00a0section of the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1610,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-3814","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3817,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3814\/revisions\/3817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}