Wood chip from a tree surgeon or bark for old turf area?

[MrAlyakhin]

So I posted previously about getting rid of artificial turf. Hopefully removing a large section today of 20 square metres. It will leave an area of compacted sand and gravel that I plan on slowly breaking up over the next few months. To make it look better in the meantime I am going to cover the area in bark.

It's not the cheapest and I've seen online people get tree surgeons to drop off wood chip for free or minimal cost. This is obviously freshly through the wood chipper. Is there any reason why that's a bad idea? Am I better off just paying for bark?

Bark is more uniform and more processed. I've had wood chip from tree surgeons and also from talking nicely to the local authority gang who were dealing with storm damaged trees, they were happy to deliver the chippings to me instead of taking them back to base. I've also had 'sawdust' from local wood workshops, it' much biggher pieces than 'dust' suggests but not as big as bark. I've used it for paths and it's been fine.

However I'd give some thought to what you eventually want to put there and when. The sawdust degrades faster than the wood chip and leaves a different kind of base. I've never used bark so I can't say how that would degrade.