I also love a crisp edge, but don't particularly like having to watch out for a plastic or metal edging when mowing. So I go out with a sharp spade and make a v-shaped trough around all my beds in the spring and again in the fall. This is a good time to get out encroaching grass and weeds too.

I also like the look of a crisp edge above anything else. I just invested in a rather pricey stainless steel Edger, worth every penny it slices through sod like it was butter. All the edgers I've had before wanted to bend not slice. This one is a real treat to work with.

A......

I use brick along most of my borders, because it provides a place for the mower wheel and a place to walk, tightrope style, without getting my feet wet in the morning before I go to work.

It's not very good at keeping the grass out of the beds, since the border is only 1 brick wide; it still needs to be dug with an edger about once a year. I take this as an opportunity to widen the beds, so I don't mind.

I use brick too, except for my woodland garden. It did have a border of bricks there and never like it. One day I ripped them all out and had this brilliant idea to use this pile of branches, large twigs and even an old christmas tree I had laying around. I cut them up in various lengths and just started weaving them all together to edge the woodland area. I love the look! Some of the branches are starting to rot and grow moss which makes the whole thing look even better. As I pick up stray branches in the yard, they get weaved in too.

Kevin

I love the idea of your border of branches and twigs etc. with moss starting to grow, in a woodland setting I think it probably looks stunning. It must look so natural as well.

A......

Kevin, can you post a pic of your woodland border? Sounds intriguing - but is it time consuming?

I'm kind of torn over what kind of border I like best, although this is an extension of my gardening preferences. I can't seem to decide on a neat, formal look, or a cottage look. Accordingly, I can't decide on a nice, more sophisticated border, or something more informal. I have a bit of each, lol.

Some of my beds are bordered just by a line of rocks. This usually started because these were rocks I dug up while digging. These are the smaller rocks, not the boulders, lol. This is a nice, informal, country look, but don't do much to keep the grass out.

Then I switched over to cutting the grass/trench edging. Everything looks so neat and crisp and orderly with a nice trench edging, although these take some work to upkeep. Its a neat, more formal look, IMO.

At a local farm, I recently saw a possible solution to my gardening split-personality, lol. The cutting garden had raised beds, about 8 inches high, and there was a bit of a trench around them, but they were also edged with large rocks, rocks which, when stood on end in the trench, were 8 to 12 inches high. It was a nice neat edge, but also kind of informal. I hope I'm explaining it well. Since I now have lots of lasagna (i.e. raised) beds, I think I might try it this season - goodness knows I have enough rocks, lol!

:)
Dee

True! I love a crisply edged bed! But it takes a lot of time and effort, so I rarely even try to do it anymore. My beds look unruly when they're uneven, because that means that my grass and lawn-weeds are creeping in. I have one small brick-edged border, and it seems to require more maintenance than not having the brick there at all.

The exception is when the garden spills over onto a hard flat surface, like the one shown in the photo. That's a beautiful garden! I think that the uneven edge helps to soften the look of all that concrete.

I have no lawn in my front garden - only paving - so no worries there :-) And yes, the spilling or cascading of low growing perennials over the edge of the paving has a very satisfactory appeal.

I prefer a crisply edged border in the back where there a small lawn. Like aftermidnight, I have a favored tool I use for this (a "lawn shark" - had for years, can't find anymore). I redo the edge periodically during the season, perhaps every third or fourth mowing. I also favor planting beds that are slightly raised above the lawn level. They slope down very gradually to the border and that V-shaped edge allows for retention of mulch and keeps it from migrating into the lawn area.

I don't think a clean, crisp edge is any more formal than one that is not - just tidier. I prefer not to line my beds with rocks or other edging materials, only because it makes weeding and edging more difficult and I opt for lower maintenance whenever possible. But they can provide a very nice look. A number of gardens in my area tend to have a bit of an Asian flavor (the climate and plant pallette lends itself to these) and often large bamboo or redwood stakes placed on end are used as a delineation between bed and lawn - it's an attractive approach and adds to the character of the garden. A similar idea with different materials could be used just as effectively with a more cottagey style.

The only trouble for me is after I cut a crisp edge along the beds by trenching, the mower wheel gets into the trench and the blade scalps the edge of the lawn. The other problem is then the grass lays down in the trench edge and doesn't get cut off. Why don't they make mowers that have cutting blades that cut outside of the mower's wheel base? I hate to have to use a weed whacker, after mowing, just to trim and clean up the grass along the edges.

My friend had a tool which she bought in England. Its basically a hand grass-clipper/shear, but with a long handle so you can use it standing up. But the beauty of this tool was that the shears are *sideways*. All tools I've seen like this have shears that are horizontal to the ground. These sideways shears are made explicitly for edging the trenches between the lawn and the beds. A bit time-consuming yes, doing it by hand, but since you can just walk along as you do it, it's a bit quicker. I wish I could find a tool like this here.

:)
Dee

I edged my garden with a single row of brick where the garden meets the lawn, and with logs where the shade/woodland garden meets the path. I hate the spaded edge for the garden beds -- at least the way the landscapers do it at my parents' house. Every spring, they edge the beds and throw the excess soil into the garden, on top of the plants! And every year I have to clean up their mess before the plants get smothered. With the brick edging, it's pretty much a one-time thing, with no mess to get out of the beds. The minor maintenence of pulling the grass runners out from between the bricks pales by comparison.

Dee

Sorry, I can't. I had to rip the whole thing apart so I could continue the painting on my house. The branches got in the way of the ladder.

It's very informal and very easy and quick to make, but that works well for this area since I don't have grass - only pine needle paths.

Kevin

Okay, thanks Kevin. I was hoping for a visual aid, lol, but I'll have to use my imagination!

:)
Dee

Dee..Fiskars makes the tool you seek, and Amazon sells it. The shear head swivels 180° allowing you to trim anything, while remaining standing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fiskars long-handled swivel shears

My beds are edged with rock as here in Missouri they are readily available and I love rocks of all sizes.

When I hardwood mulch my beds in the spring, I put newspaper down and add a 12" edging of mulch outside the rock (or about the size of newspaper folded in half. I like the way it looks. The wheel of the mower runs on the mulch with hardly a problem.

Well, donn, what do you know, so they do! Fiskars, that is, makes that tool. I wonder though, since it adjusts one way or the other, if that makes it a) more prone to breaking and b) more unwieldy to use? (as opposed to the one with a fixed shear) But for that price it is worth a shot. It certainly is better than either crawling on my poor old knees or getting up and down a hundred times along the length of a bed (which isn't much easier on the knees either!)

Thanks for the heads up.
:)
Dee

i found plastic edging in Target that looks like brick. You just pound it in.

I love neat edges and have some brick, some rock and several beds that I use an edger on. None are the perfect solution. I would say that once the brick is laid it is the easiest except if you want to make the bed bigger.

I've used pink pavers to edge two of my beds - when we moved in the previous owner left us 1,000+ pavers in the garage so I've been whittling the pile down by edging my beds. I just loosly put them in as opposed to concreting them in - just in case I want to enlarge the beds or change their shape at all, less work. But they do make the beds look nice and neat - at least at the edges! My beds are cottage style so essentially chaotic, except for the edging. My shed bed, as I call it, doesn't have a paver edge yet and looks incredibly messy by contrast.

tess

Here is a link that might be useful:

I too suffered this dilemma. I finally purchased a cobblestone mold and proceeded to make cobblestones as time and funds were available. I broke the mould, which was 12"x12", in half when cement was about 1 day old. I also bought cheap plastic edging and placed in down, with the cement cobblestone on the inside of the plastic, for the wheel of the lawn mower to run on. Instructions to my lawn mowing boys, is keep the wheel on the cobblestone and cut anything that is there. Works great and is less money than other edgings.
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Also bought another 24"x24" cobblestone cement mould and made some walkways.
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Anyone can do this, I just used a wheelbarrow and mixed as much as I could handle.

flora, love the cobblestone edging and walkways, have thought about using those molds myself for a small patio area I have. That idea is still on the drawingboard but seeing your edging has sent all kinds of new ideas through my head. Thanks for sharing.
I still prefer a sharp edge in certain places in my garden and I do have gravel paths with a rock edged raised beds in one area but I have one gravel path where I think those flagstones would really look nice. Oh dear, more work, this garden is never finished. That was a very silly statement, LOL, when is a garden ever finished.

A......

Nice pics, tess and flora, and beautiful beds.

Flora, do those molded stones look as good in "real-life" as they do in the photos? I've thought about these molds also, but wondered how real it looked in the actual garden.

Thanks,
Dee

I really like them, and have incorporated bricks, rocks and gravel as well. The trick with them if doing a large area is to prepare the ground properly first. I live where we get a lot of frost in the ground, which can crack the large pieces of cement, but the beauty of this is that the pieces are individual and move with the heave of the frozen ground and finally when spring arrives and the frost leaves they are perfect again.
You can look at my landscape pictures...not taken particularly to show the edging, but you get a good idea if you like the look or not. Most of this work is about 3-5 years old.

Here is a link that might be useful: landscape pictures 2006

I edge all my beds with a sharp small shovel each Spring and then plant a border of white impatiens around the shade gardens and white vincas edge the sunny beds. An occasional trim here and there during the season keeps things looking neat though not as formal as some would prefer. I like the cottage look in my beds but the white edgings give them a little class.

Hubby wants to edge around our hedges (which is basically the perimeter of the back yard) with "something". I read a tip once that was along the same line as flora2b's cobblestones, and I think I *might* have Hubby talked into it. The tip (which I think I read in a thread here on GW somewhere) involved burying bricks/pavers pretty much flush with the ground. This gives you a visual and physical border, but since the mower can get right up on it, there is nothing to weed-whack afterwards.

Hubby is resisting the idea, because it will be a lot more work to trench it out to bury the bricks initially, but I'm thinking of the time and effort (and noise and stinky exhaust smell) that will be saved in the decades to come from not having to weed-whack the entire perimeter of our half-acre back yard!!!

Thanks, flora, for that added info on the concrete molds. It was a big help.

BTW, your gardens are lovely! Thanks for sharing those beautiful pictures!

:)
Dee

I've done something similar to Flora, but I put bricks inside the black plastic edging. Since the black plastic is buried down to about ground level, the grass hides it, but grass can't grow between the bricks. My husband, who does the lawn mowing, vetoed the cut edge (which I prefer) for the same reason as John - the wheel falls into the trench. The mower wheel can run on the brick, and is above the plastic edging. I've had no problems with the edging heaving after 3 winters here in the land of frost heaving, so I'll be doing the rest of my beds this way. If I could find a source of affordable Trex type bender board, I might well be doing that instead, but I've had no luck with local sources.

Flora,
That looks great!
I have behind my barn, 6000+ bricks. I was thinking of laying a border of them side by side (vs. end to end) for the lawn mower. However, one of the things that has prevented me from edging anything with anything but Round-Up, is that I have 3 acres of beds.

As it is, right now the only chemical I use at all is Round-Up. I fight poison ivy, so I always have it. I simply sprayed the edges of my beds so I could mow on the dead edge. The mulch is mounded up abruptly, so there is a defined edge of the garden. The Round-Up creates kind of a no-man's land. Unfortunately, although it does a good job of keeping the weeds and grass from growing into the beds, it's not the prettiest at all.

I love the idea of the edging + the bricks/stones. I might become a little OCD about this and try one of my smaller beds. That'll only be maybe 150' x 15 to 30' wide!

Oh - and for anyone who is looking for bricks? Don't forget Freecycle. People have all this stuff stacked up behind their houses....

Christine

I have used the 24 x 24" mold. Mine is brick rather than cobbles though. I will pass along a secret I learned to getting these to look good/ more realistic. I did not buy the concrete colorant from the big box store. Instead, I went to a local concrete supply company and they sold me a big bag of integral color (red brick color) for $50- which is not only better quality than what the BB's sell but also ends up being much cheaper. I also bought a 'release agent' from them. I bought this in a brown color.

You mix the integral color with the concrete then the whole piece is colored- it won't look weird if it breaks. Then, you use the release agent after you pull the mold off. Just broadcast it unevenly over the surface. After a certain amount of time you wash off the excess release agent. You now have bricks or cobbles that have more realism and interest.