Agatha Bell

I am late to the party but thought my experience might be helpful. Where I live in Australia, playground mulch is usually bark mulch called tan bark. It's lighter and more durable than wood chip. The previous owners of our property covered large swathes of the garden with tan bark (some of it over the top of black plastic). It seems to soak up water ok, but also dry out quickly, so with the light rains we have here, none of that moisture was held long enough to reach the soil. The soil underneath was dry and lifeless while surface roots cling desperately to the tan bark layer. I also suspect that it was laid up to 5 years ago and still hasn't broken down.

In parts of the garden that have received consistent moisture this past year (like under the trampoline where the kids run the sprinkler in the summer for a cool bounce) the tan bark has composted beautifully, so all is not lost.

Hope this observation is helpful. I love regular tree service woodchip - full of life and smells of joy. Play ground tan bark is not that.

Thanks for the welcome!

I have watched this forum for years and love the kindness, knowledge, wisdom and positive enthusiasm of this group. Such a great vibe!
I grew up in rural central NSW (that's flat and hot and dry, sheep and wheat country), from a traditional farming family. My grandparents rarely left their farm and that's where we spent most of our school holidays. They grew walnuts and oranges, had a large veggie garden, fish from the river, yabbies from the dam (that's our native crayfish), and mutton (of course).
I always imagined I would end up with a farm, but I married a software engineer LOL and so I have embraced urban permaculture in Canberra (the bush capital). Canberra has wonderfully challenging growing conditions: hot dry summers (several days over 40°C), cool winters down to -8°C with heavy frost from late Autumn to mid Spring. The soil is old, compacted, shallow stoney clay, with very little organic matter. And the local brushtail possum population is thriving (they eat all new plants. And then wee on the front porch). It's pretty fun.
Sunken hugelkultur is the key to success here, so I dig a lot of holes.
Anyway - that's a long introduction to me!