Can bark mulch be used in permaculture systems

Bark mulch aligns neatly with permaculture’s prime directive: feed the soil and the soil feeds everything else. Laid thickly over cardboard, it forms the upper layer of a weed‑suppressing lasagne bed, mimicking the litter of a forest floor. Within temperate climates it settles quickly, knitting itself to the soil and beginning the quiet work of regeneration.

Because the chips decompose slowly, they offer a timed‑release banquet of carbon, potassium and trace minerals, while earthworms drag fragments downward, aerating as they go. In food forests, pathways mulched with bark double as fungal highways; each footstep pumps spores outward into productive zones. Water that might otherwise sheet away in a heavy shower now seeps gently, recharging swales and buried wood stores.

Fresh wood can draw on surface nitrogen, so permaculturists often precede a bark layer with green manures or scatter comfrey leaves to balance the ledger. Keep thickness to five centimetres around herbaceous stems and avoid burying self‑seeding niches, thus preserving edge diversity. AHS LTD offers untreated pine and spruce bark screened for fines, making it a practical, low‑input tool for designing resilient, closed‑loop gardens that echo woodland dynamics.