Hi Mayamurdo, I know exactly what you mean!
Mulch comes in many forms but is basically any organic material that will retain moisture in the soil. It does depend on what you are wanting to put it around, for example, vegetables can be mulched with well rotted manure but you might not want this in your front garden flower beds. You can mulch your flowers with bark chips.

It's good to mulch in early spring, to suppress weeds and to get worms to take the nutrients down into the soil for you. I've read that a 2" depth of mulch is best - but I can't make enough compost to do that in my garden! So I use some where I can, to try to get at least some of the garden 'fed'. Clematis and roses are 'hungry feeders' and they get a mulh round them every year.