One Redditor couldn't help sharing photos they had taken of a particularly terrible tree-mulching job they kept passing.
"This excellent mulching job I get to pass by when going to my local home centre," the poster wrote. "They've been like this since before I started visiting this plaza regularly 3-4 years ago. At least they're just Chanticleer pears. Gee I wonder why the one on the end died."
The accompanying photos show a row of trees each fitted with its own suffocating mulch volcano. Mulch volcanoes are a pervasive and popular landscaping trend in which mulch is piled up and packed tight around the base of a tree, forming a volcano-like cone. While they are ostensibly intended to protect the trunk, they actually do the opposite.
Instead of protecting trees, mulch volcanoes leave them much more vulnerable to deadly fungi and disease by dampening and softening the wood, which is not allowed to breathe. In addition, they often trick the tree into growing its roots upward and around the base of the trunk instead of into the ground, essentially asphyxiating the tree.
The correct way to mulch around a tree leaves the root flare exposed, as a helpful guide from The Ohio State University pointed out.
Mulch volcanoes, despite being popular, are bad for trees and a waste of time, money, and mulch. Though this is common knowledge among the commenters on various subreddits, judging from the number of mulch volcanoes that continue to sprout in the wild, it is not common knowledge even among professional landscapers.
"So wrong, so very wrong! Thanks for pointing it out!" one commenter wrote.
"I wonder why they stopped there? They could've mulched all the way up to the first branch at that rate. What a bunch of cowards!" another joked.
"lol they would SAVE money just not doing this," a third chimed in.
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