SPIRITS ARE UP WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN

maintain a healthy and balanced environment for your precious plants.

With these three qualities, they are a superb addition to your borders.

Bark chips need to be about 5cm deep, so check your measurements to ensure you buy enough material to cover the space thoroughly.

Now is the perfect time to stock up on supplies because garden centres tend to have spring deals on this sort of material.

Don’t try to use your own tree cuttings. Fresh chippings will suck nitrogen from the soil around the plants. It’s better to buy ready-made bark chips or composted bark.

Bark chips come in a variety of sizes. Smaller ones look great in pots and tubs, where they will have the same effect of keeping weeds down and moisture levels up.

That means less evaporation and watering and fewer dead plants.

Bark chips do compost down over time but it is a slow process and you should not need to top up too often – once every couple of years at most.

Over time, the process also enriches and aerates the soil.

Bark chips can stimulate plant growth – experts found that mulched plants and trees grow faster than those that remain unmulched.

If you use bark chippings for pathways, you will need to lay a membrane between the soil and the chippings that will act as a weed barrier.

You can buy weed-suppressant fabric by the metre at most garden centres and DIY stores. It has been specially designed to permit drainage but it will prevent weeds from forcing their way through the bark.

When laying a path of bark chips, it should be about 10cm deep because it will naturally compact over time as people stomp all over it.

So make sure the base is deep enough by removing topsoil and any other existing material to a decent depth.

Peg out the area with string and use a nice sharp spade to make the job as pain-free as possible.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of different bark chip shades available, so you should be able to find one to enhance your garden beautifully.

Personally, I love the ones that have a rich reddish shade to them, such as pine bark, which provides a gorgeous and warm contrast against the cool greens of other plants in the garden. The down side to this colour is that it will show up more in the soil as it composts down.

You can buy bark chippings from any decent garden centre.

Reputable retailers will ensure the wood comes from a renewable source and this should be clearly labelled, too.

Look for Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, which guarantees responsibly sourced wood that comes from renewable sources. The FSC is the only wood certification scheme to be endorsed by major environmental charities such as the Woodland Trust, the WWF and Greenpeace.