Interesting how you recommend wood chip as a soil improver. I take your point about planting through a layer of woodchip, the woodchip is mulch. I don't see that as a soil improver however. Impossible to grow a lawn with wood chip in the soil (which I note you did state in your post). Maybe I misread what you were saying as conditioning the soil (like with compost or poop) when you were talking more as a mulch.
rob
Wood chips have enough fertility that they will, long term, condition the soil. 0-0.2-0.2 is nothing to sneeze at. If you are starting a virgin lot, with its 75-years weed seed bank, what you probably want is a 2-inch layer of seed-free, high quality top soil. That way you come in with some control over the lot.
Realistically, the many tons of organic matter one needs can be had with wood chips, leaves, or manure. I doubt that one can get them by taking trips to the local Starbucks. Now, I love leaf mold, absolutely everything grows well in there, but if you want two inches of topsoil from leaves you have to have minimum a couple feet and probably more. And its nutrient content will be a fraction of that of wood. Manure will solve all your nutrient needs but will also bring in its own seeds, and will also be colonized by weeds very soon. You will also need more than one foot manure to make two inches topsoil.
In general the nutrient and mulching requirements of perennials are vastly different from those of grass. Wood chips won't do everything for you (they won't do grass, they might need pH and N amendments for some veggies, and they are slow-acting) but to me the control one has at the beginning, and the minimal maintenance later, are reason enough to go that way. Minimal maintenance is also what landscaping companies look for, and they do what I do.
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