I'm now Paul_in_redwood_city. My rental house has a side patio with a long wood fence along it that faces the sidewalk. There is a strip of ground between the sidewalk and the fence. There was landscape fabric with about 3 inches of wood chips on top of that. I removed the landscape fabric, reserving the wood chips on the sidewalk, amended the soil, planted gladiolus bulbs, and then replaced the mulch. My really ignorant question is, aside from thinking maybe there really isn't enough sun to grow gladiolus, was replacing the mulch a mistake? Can the glads make their way through the wood chips, or do I need to remove them until the glads emerge, and then replace them?