One bag of mulch will cover 18 ft.² if a landscape architect wants to lay mulch on a border of plants around three sides of a 6' x 10' shed how wide can the border be

The width of the boarder is 0.83 ft

Step-by-step explanation:

To provide an answer to the question, we make the following assumptions;

Amount of mulch available for laying = 1 bag

Pattern of laying mulch = Rectangular pattern

Therefore where we have three sides of a shed to lay the mulch, we have

18 ft² = 2×(6+x)×x + 10×x

∴ 18 = 12·x+2·x² + 10·x

or 2·x² + 20·x - 18 = 0

Solving the above quadratic equation, we have

x = -5 + √34 or x = -(5 + √34)

Since we are dealing with the width of the border which is always positive, we have

The width of the boarder = -5 + √34 ft = 0.83 ft.