Wood chips, from a tree company, not the fancy kind in bags.

thin layers at a time of dried grass clippings

build up adding some each week

make sure you don't touch stems

once it wets down again & forms together like a mat, but you can push aside to plant more

-- trap those voles--They'll be back under any mulch. I have them too!

For "weed" suppresion any mulch needs to be thick enough to keep those "weeds" from getting the sunlight they need to grow and that means thicker then 2 inches. Thin layers of grass clippings will not help.
However, to "fix" your soil moisture problem you may need to think seriously about raised beds.

Second the wood chips - inexpensive (often free), great for weed suppression and will not add to any "soggy" conditions. In fact, will help to dry things up a bit.

Over time, eventually, the wood chips, or any other mulch material, might change the soil characterisitcs enough that the soil would drain better provided the high water table, as expressed by the nearby swamp, were also lowered. A mulch piled on a soil with a water table mere inches down will not do much to change that.

Thanks for the suggestion of grass clippings, but we mulch mow the lawn (unfortunately for the compost pile).

I am glad to hear that wood chips wouldn't be too moisture retentive - for some reason I thought they would be - but I still have a few concerns:

-I have wood chips on some perennial plantings and frankly they don't seem to suppress weeds nearly as much as I'd like.

-how would I add compost to the garden? The wood chips seem like a 'set it and forget it' type of solution, and I'm not convinced that I'd be able to remove or move them to amend my beds, as they seem to get embedded in the soil.

Thanks for your help!

~emmers

P.S. Kimm, I feel like I've gone to a therapist to talk through some stress and been diagnosed with a deep underlying psychological trauma! :) I don't consider my garden to have a severe water problem, and I'm sorry if I mislead you by mentioning the swamp. It is a quality or attribute of my garden that it is on the wet side, and it has pros and cons like anything else. I quite like not having to water my garden except in August. I don't think wanting a minimally moisture retentive mulch is an indication that I have to reconfigure my entire garden. My plants do just fine. (and my paper mulch is certainly not several inches thick, and yet manages somehow to suppress weeds!)

I use shredded paper and shredded cardboard. Put it down, wet it and it stays put and disappears by the end of the growing season. Completely free, and can be replaced as needed.

I do try to recycle my paper and cardboard (I realize that might sound ridiculous when I bought a roll of Kraft paper for mulching, but that was primarily a convenience-based decision.)

So wood chips, if I can figure out how to use them in an annually renewed garden.

I guess I could also consider a breathable/woven uv stabilized plastic...

I've also been thinking about the luxuriously long and abundant pine needles I see when we visit South Carolina. It seems that they'd be moisture resistant and fluffy enough to move around when planting or amending. Is this what's called 'pine straw?'. Would it be attractive to the voles? And is there a more local equivalent, or do I just need to fill up the truck on our next visit?

~emmers