How Colored Mulch Changed The Landscape 

February 1, 2025

The sight of colored wood mulch stacked outside lawn and garden stores is so common it can be difficult to appreciate the unlikely journey of the past half century. Through necessity, creativity, innovation and a bit of good fortune, the mulch industry truly transformed the landscape of daily life. 

Like many businesses, the mulch industry began as an indirect result of government regulation. Decades before covering front lawns, businesses and public spaces the world over, wood chips were considered a waste product and burned, along with sawdust and tree bark. 

That changed in 1970, when the Clean Air Act required a dramatic shift in the way the lumber industry handled the leftovers from sawmills. The prohibition on burning unwanted bits of timber resulted in accumulating piles and a need to find a new outlet. 

Pioneers of what later became the mulch industry realized the previously unwanted wood chips provided moisture control, erosion control and weed control. They turned to the lawn and garden market as a way repurpose the wood chips for beneficial use. 

COLOR VISION 

While consumers slowly began to embrace wood mulch as a landscaping solution, the range of products available today would have been unimaginable in its early history. As little as a generation ago, colored mulch was more a novelty than the norm. 

Roger Underwood, co-founder of Becker Underwood, recalls a marketing project in 1986 that took a twist. The intent of the photo shoot was to capture images of a temporary blue spray indicator designed for pest control technicians. 

The wind blows where it wishes, and the overspray landed on faded mulch nearby. “Well, this isn’t going to look good — blue mulch,” an employee remarked.  

After thinking it through for a moment, he continued. “Maybe we should have a colorant that’s brown so it would look better on the mulch.” 

It was a lightbulb moment — coloring mulch. No such industry existed, no consumer was demanding it and it may have been the first time any business seriously pursued it.  

UNCHARTED TERRITORY 

It’s not to say it came easily from there. Early efforts focused on a topically applied colorant. The idea was to sell it in bottles directly to consumers. The marketing pitch was centered around spraying faded mulch instead of buying new mulch every spring. Customers kept choosing to buy new mulch. 

Eventually, Becker Underwood — a company that later became known as Colorbiotics — created a product called Magic Mulch PF, a concentrated formula sold in 30-gallon drums. The early customers were wood recyclers. Pallet material waste was the most common product for application. 

By the late 1980s, some professional mulch companies saw the benefit of their mulch’s appearance lasting into the next year, and they purchased the colorant. Colored mulch started to find its footing, even if it took baby steps in the early days. 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

By the mid 1990s, colored mulch was somewhere between an experiment and a must-have landscaping product. It did not enjoy universal praise. 

“There were a lot of questions,” said Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch & Soil Council. “There was a lot of skepticism and some downright scorn at many points.” There were questions about the chemicals used to make colorant and whether runoff was safe for other plants.  

There were questions about the longevity of various products. And certainly, there was a question of profitability for producers, given extra pennies per bag could cost them a contract. 

While colorant formulas varied by manufacturer, there was some commonality in how colorant was applied to wood chips. Mulch generally ran through something like an auger, got dunked in colored water and dropped out the other side. It was a messy recipe. Water and color streamed across mulch yards, and with them, lost money and resources due to inefficiencies.  

MULCH MACHINES 

Having pioneered the mulch colorant, Becker Underwood saw a need to build a machine fit for purpose.  

The crude machines employed to get colored mulch in motion were insufficient for a growing market demand. 

Mulch is dense, and it has to be colored in high volumes. That requires specific types of motors and augers. New equipment tailored to the industry would also enable a more consistent, precise product. 

In 1996, Becker Underwood released its Paddle Mixers capable of producing 80 to 150 yards per hour. Significantly, they employed bilateral agitation to maximize water and colorant distribution. 

The company sold hundreds of units to producers who recognized a new playing field for the industry. 

GLOBAL IMPACT 

The mulch business has come a long way from its inauspicious beginning, and later, accidental step into colorant. Today, more than half of all wood mulch is colored, and landscape stores from Alaska to Argentina carry the products. 

“I was recently in Johannesburg, South Africa, and at the airport there was colored mulch,” Underwood said. “I just tipped my hat and said out loud, ‘Thanks for the business.‘” While no longer in the mulch business, Underwood still reflects on experiencing firsthand the early days of coloring wood mulch and watching it improve and spread to consumers all over the world. 

“My co-founder, Jeff Becker, and I were just two average kids from a small farm town in western Iowa,” he said. “We’re pretty humbled by it all.”