When we first started tackling our garden-overhaul project we knew that we needed to remove many plants and rebuild the soil health.

A big part of our project involved removing the grass from the property. However without the grass, the exposed dirt would dry out and leave us further from our goal.

That’s when we turned to wood chips. 

We found the free service in Portland called Chip Drop that we have been pleased with for several drops now. 

We created our account which included details like our address, the kinds of tree chips we wanted or didn’t want, and where we wanted the chips to be dropped. It also asks if you’d like to donate money to cover the arborists time and efforts. We figured that our chances of getting chips would go up if we offered to chip in ourselves (pun intended) so we paid $40 each time.

The first drop we got took several months. I’m not sure why, but it did and we soon forgot that we had ever ordered chips in the first place. Then one day we got home from work and a HUGE pile of chips had been dropped off on the side of the street directly in front of our house. Success!

Those chips got spread across our garden, lined paths and the side of our house, and over the course of the year broke down to make beautiful compost that we now use.

This year we requested another chip drop and much to our surprise it came within two weeks. It was delivered in the same spot on the side of the road, and now that we know the City of Portland isn’t going to come fine us for having a huge load of wood chips taking up space on the road we are excited to continue our progress towards becoming a grass-free yard.

The next time that you are looking for wood chips—consider Chip Drop.