Your suggestion on flower beds against wood houses?

Not sure what you need help with

Any of those will do the job. Small rocks are the hardest to keep looking clean, bark always looks nice and breaks down to feed the soil, and pine needles are great for weed blocking as long as your flowers prefer a lower ph soil.

Which do you like the look of? You should pick that one!

: )

Personally, I would not use bark against my wood house. No need inviting carpenter ants or termites to dinner.

Inertia has a good point: bark can attract wood-eating pests. Skip that.

Rocks are great for drainage, pine needles lower soil pH as they break down but are a great weed block in the meantime. Your best choice has a lot to do with your preferences.

If you go with rock, try for a "mixed jack," a blend of different sized stones. It looks more natural. The small stones trap less debris. The big ones stay put better. Mixed, the small stones fill the gaps between the bigger ones to prevent debris capture & the big ones keep the smaller ones from messily drifting away in your next bad storm.

Go with either gravel or river rock, but don't blend the two textures. They don't appear together naturally & that combo would stand out in a bad way.

Btw, if your heart craves the look of shredder bark but you don't want your woodland friends treating it like an appetizer for the entree of your house, go with rubber mulch.

Rubber mulch can be found an assorted natural looking colors. Its shredding process mimics bark mulch well. It costs more at first, but it lasts for years. As a bonus, it helps the environment: it is made from recycled tires which are otherwise hard to dispose of safely.