mulchless?

I recently built a somewhat large flower bed. I had it all cover with cypress mulch and then someone decided to throw a cigarette into it. The next day my garden was destroyed. Majority of the mulch has become ash or just half burnt. I know ash is full of nitrogen so that's a good thing. Problem is i think my landlord wants me to get rid of the mulch because of the risk of some idiot throwing another cig. in and burning up more things....oh half the stairs to our balcony was burnt down.
Can you somehow do a garden without mulch? Can i just lay some garden fabric and then put on a couple inches of dirt on top all of it. any ideas?

Sorry to hear about your garden! Personally I think the landlord ought to do something about the smokers rather than making you change your mulch...unless he paves the whole property there's always going to be something that could catch fire if people are throwing lit cigarettes on the ground.

I would probably consider using rocks as mulch--they definitely won't catch fire. There's also mulch made from rubber which would be less flammable than wood, but rubber smells really awful if it burns so if it does catch on fire that would not be good. I wouldn't do the landscape fabric--it can be more trouble than it's worth, plus if you're going to stick dirt on top of it there'll be plenty of weeds that will be able to get a foothold in the dirt you're putting on top, so I don't think you'll help yourself that much. And your last option is to not mulch at all--get some groundcovers going and let them fill in the space between the plants, acting like a living mulch. You'll have to really stay on top of the weeding until they fill in, but once they've grown a bit you should find yourself having to weed less often. You might consider succulents like sedum or iceplant, they're pretty fire resistant because of all the water they store in their leaves.

the ground covering idea sounds fantastic. Thing with that is i was thinking of doing some veggies in one spot. would that be a problem...with a ground cover. What's so really pretty ground cover.

As long as you don't grow a super aggressive groundcover like ivy your veggies should be fine. Here's a site that has some groundcover ideas--they have a search engine where you can put in your zone, sun/shade conditions, etc and it'll tell you which ones are best (you don't necessarily have to buy from them--jot down the name of the ones you like and a lot of them you can probably find at local nurseries) www.stepables.com

over perennials means i can have plants growing with the cover. They also will come back when they go under?

I have a couple of kinds of flowers that don't like any mulch. They prefer to bake in the sun.

Lavender and tall bearded irises. Neither are a groundcover but I just thought you might like to consider them.

Yes, your perennials and groundcover will come back. Baby Tears (sedum) is a pretty light green ground cover that is not invasive.

This all seems too perfect. Stepables.com seems to be to pricey. 60 dollars worth of ground cover is too much for my garden. it's large but i guess to my standards. 24 seems a lot. What sites are great to buy from?

I know this is heresy, but I don't mulch. I think that this coarse bark mulch or (urp!) PINE needles ruin the look of a bed. I like to see soil. I get by just fine.

I'd probably look locally for groundcovers--local nurseries ought to have some and even places like Lowes and Home Depot will have some depending on which ones you decided on. I love Stepables search feature on their website but you can definitely get better deals on the plants if you buy them elsewhere.