How Much Mulch Will You Need For Your Landscape Beds?

To calculate the volume of mulch you'll need, multiply the square footage of the area to be covered (SF) by the depth of the mulch (DM). Than multiply the result by 0.0031 to determine the number of cubic yards you'll need.

The equation looks like this: SF x DM x 0.0031 = Cubic Yards.

However, there are some things you should know about mulch before you try to determine how much mulch you will need.

First of all, mulch has many uses other than cosmetics. Mulch is very nice to look at and mulch will hide some unsightly areas in your landscape beds. However, mulch does much more than that. Mulch has many roles, one of which is it keeps moisture in conserving water for your plants. Another is that mulch helps minimize weeds. Most weeds need sunlight to grow so you have to make sure the mulch is covering every area and that the mulch is thick enough to block sunlight. The other is that mulch keeps your plants warm in the winter months. Believe it or not, mulch works as insulation for your plants and flowers. So why am I telling you all this when all you are trying to do is figure out how much mulch you need? Well thickness of mulch is a key factor. The thicker you mulch your beds the better off you are.

So, how thick should you spread your mulch? We recommend 3' to 4' of mulch should be applied to all areas of your landscape beds. If you are spreading mulch around trees, pleas keep in mind that you do not want mulch to cover the base of newly planted trees.

Getting back to the original question: How do you determine how much mulch you need for your landscape beds?

STEP 1: Measure the square footage of your garden or landscape beds you wish to mulch:

If the garden bed is square or rectangular that you are looking to mulch, you should measure the length and width with a tape measure. To find the square footage of the garden bed you are looking to mulch, simply multiply the length by the width. For example, if your garden bed measures 15 by 10 feet, multiply 15 by 10, which is 150. So area in square feet is 150.

If you have a circular bed you are looking to mulch, you should measure the radius. The radius is the distance from one edge of the bed to the center of the circle. Multiply the radius by itself, then multiply the result by 3.14 (pi) to get the area of the circle. For example, if the radius of the circle is 5 feet, multiply 5 by 5 to get 25, then multiply 25 by 3.14. You get 78.5 feet. That is the area inside the circle, in square feet.

When measuring for mulch in a triangular bed, it gets a little tricky. To find the area of a triangle, multiply the base by the height, and then divide by 2. (If the base is 5 feet and the height is 3 feet, that would be 5 x 3 = 15, then divide by 2: 7.5.

Mulch looks great on beds that have curvy or different shapes. To do this simply curve a rope or similar object along the border, you can use a hose or something like it for this as well. Then, straighten out the hose into a rectangle and do the math from there.

After you measure all the beds you wish to mulch, add up the square footage of each bed to get the total square footage you will need to cover with mulch.

STEP 2: You will need to do a little educated questing for this step. You will want to guess the percentage of the total bed you are looking to mulch that is taken up or occupied by plants. A simple way to do this is to use 10% for lightly occupied gardens, 15% for moderate and 20% for heavily occupied garden beds. The reason for this is you will not need to mulch these areas. If you did mulch the entire bed than mulch would just sit on top of your plants. So subtract the percentage by your total square footage.

STEP 3: Now you know the square feet of your landscape bed or garden space you wish to mulch. You can now calculate how much mulch to buy.

Keep in mind that the thickness of mulch is a important part of mulching your beds. We recommend 3' to 4' of mulch for the reasons above. I will use 4' of mulch for my math below.

To calculate the volume of mulch you'll need, multiply the square footage of the area to be covered (SF) by the depth of the mulch (DM). Multiply the result by 0.0031 to determine the number of cubic yards you'll need. The equation looks like this: SF x DM x 0.0031 = Cubic Yards.

So if the total square footage was 400(SF) and your depth was (4') than it would look like this:

400 x 4 x.0031=4.96yards. Always round up so I would need 5 yards of mulch.