Garden & Soil
Mulch Calculator
Figure out exactly how much mulch you need for your garden beds or landscaping project — by area, depth, and shape — and see the total cost whether you're buying by the bag or in bulk.
You'll need
0.28 cu yd
Enter your bed's dimensions and desired depth. If you have several beds the same size, use “Number of beds” instead of calculating each one separately.
How much mulch do I need?
The amount of mulch you need depends on the size of the area you're covering and how deep you want the layer to be. For most garden beds, a depth of 2 to 3 inches strikes the right balance: enough to suppress weeds and retain soil moisture, without smothering plant roots or trapping excess water against stems.
A simple rule of thumb: one cubic yard of mulch covers about 100 square feet at a 3-inch depth. If you're working with a standard rectangular bed, multiply the length by the width to get your square footage, then use the calculator above to convert that into cubic yards, cubic feet, or bags based on your chosen depth.
For irregular beds, break the area into smaller rectangles, circles, or triangles, calculate the volume for each shape separately, and add them together. This is more accurate than estimating the whole bed as a single rough shape.
When it comes to buying, bagged mulch works well for small projects or touch-ups, while bulk mulch delivered by the cubic yard is almost always cheaper once you're covering more than a couple hundred square feet.
Frequently asked questions
At a standard 3-inch depth, one cubic yard of mulch covers about 100 square feet. For a quick estimate, divide your bed's square footage by 100 to get the cubic yards needed at that depth.