Bark chippings

[Sue Balou]

I'm a complete gardening novice but luckily 2 years ago we moved into a house where the previous owners were quite good gardeners.

Back garden is traditional flower beds and lawn. The flower beds have bark chippings between the plants. But we have 2 cats and after 2 years of the using the flower beds as a giant cat litter tray, the chippings need renewing/topping up.

It is recommended to remove all the old chippings before putting new ones down or can I just top up? Also, would there be any benefit from lightly digging over the flower beds before putting the new bark chippings down?
Finally, is there a formula to work out how many bags of chippings I need to get? I've estimated the flower bed area to be 150 sq feet.

Thanks

[sn�gs]

You can just 'top up' over the existing chippings.

Maybe put some plastic sheeting or similar down underneath first... stops the weeds coming up through and will help stop the cats digging...

[woofgang]

I reckon the cats would shred the plastic no time flat!

[Sue Balou]

We don't have a problem with weeds in the flowerbeds, so I'll just be adding more chippings.

Thanks for the replies.