Our local dump has piles of free mulch but most residents don’t use it. Why? For one thing, the mulch is newly ground up and not processed (heated) to kill any sort of bacteria etc... This free mulch, for example, may contain the disease that killed a tree. If used, it could spread to the tree in your yard. My FIL (who was the most thrifty of men since he was raised during the Depression) brought home a lot of it. He found a used needle in it (thank goodness he wasn’t stuck with that) and some rusty barb wire. We ended up taking him for a tetanus shot since the wire did cut him. After that... we bought mulch.
Thanks for saying it first. Don’t be a sucker, don’t ever use that free stuff for any horticultural application. Always use bagged mulch that you pay for.
Useful tip: thanks!
The best place to buy mulch is your local Boy Scout Troop when they sell it each spring.
(The fact that my oldest son will be crossing over to Boy Scouts in February and have to sell mulch for his new troop is purely coincidental...) :)