Mulching and Wood Chipping in Auckland

Arborist chip is good mulch. It is a mix of leaf, bark and wood, it breaks down slowly, it holds moisture through a dry Auckland February, and it suppresses weeds better than most bagged products. If you have garden beds, a bank, or trees you want to mulch out, say so when you book and the chip stays on site instead of going on the truck. It costs you nothing and saves the disposal run.

Two practical notes: keep it to 75–100mm deep and pull it back off the trunk of anything you mulch around, because chip piled against a stem holds moisture where you least want it. And use fresh chip on the surface as mulch rather than digging it in — it ties up nitrogen while it breaks down.

The chipper needs to reach the material, or the material needs to be carried to the chipper. On a tight back section with steps and no side access, everything has to be hand-carried, and that is what makes those jobs slower. Larger trunk wood is over chipper size and gets cut into rounds and removed, or left stacked as firewood if you want it.

Diseased material is the other exception — anything that should not be spread around a property goes off site rather than being chipped onto your garden.