A new homeowner outside of St. Louis, Missouri, recently took to the r/gardening subreddit seeking advice on how to transform a flower bed that the previous owners had covered in landscaping fabric and rubber mulch.
After removing five and a half yard waste bags of the rubber mulch, the poster wanted to know if they could "just top it off with more soil and throw some local wild flowers in there and water regularly."
The other members of the subreddit were eager to jump in with advice.
"Depending on how much sun it gets, it's the perfect size for an herb garden — put some rosemary and lavender in the back, some sage, some oregano, some lemon balm," one commenter suggested.
"Not sure what your budget is, but I'd recommend also incorporating a perennial or two that you really like. It will result in less work for future you!" another wrote.
"Looks really nice after your redo. You might want to go with compost to top it off rather than more topsoil. It'll add some nutrients in there," someone else chimed in.
While nearly everyone who commented had different plants to suggest, there were several common threads: native plants are the best; be careful to not plant anything invasive that will take over the entire space; and the most important work of removing the landscaping fabric and rubber mulch had already been done.
As the original poster pointed out, rubber mulch — which is made from shredded tires — is intended to help curb weeds but doesn't even do that effectively. In addition, it smells terrible, leaches toxic chemicals into the soil, and is difficult to clean up. In short, it should be avoided at all costs.
"Oh I love these ideas! Thank you for such an informed answer. It gets pretty full sun house faces south East. So [not] much shade from late morning through the evening," the original poster responded. "At this point I think we are planning on doing something more simple for this year to see how we do and branch out more next year."
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