Edging around a garden border serves to contain soil, mulch or spreading groundcovers while also excluding creeping turfgrass and unwanted foot or vehicle traffic. It also contributes to the overall aesthetics of the landscape. A broad range of edging types are potentially implemented around a garden's border and differ in ease of installation and maintenance, permanence, appearance and other characteristics.
Trench or Cut Edge
A trench, or cut edge, border simply involves cutting a trench or V-shaped ditch into the ground around the edge of a garden and requires no edging material. A sharp spade or edger is used to create a trench 4 to 6 inches wide with a similar depth. Occasional re-cutting throughout the year is needed to keep grasses from growing into the garden, but this type of edging allows for garden expansion or the addition of a different edging material later.
Landscape timbers, logs or conventional construction timbers used as edging around gardens are relatively durable and affordable and can also bring a natural or rustic feel to the site. Wood can potentially create a raised edge or, installed flush with the soil, serve as a mowing strip. If it is not placed in a prepared trench, lengths of rebar, spikes or similar hardware are pounded through pre-drilled holes to secure the wood in place.
Bricks, Pavers and Stones
Various types of bricks, pavers and stones can serve as stylish and durable garden edgings and are available with a variety of shapes and colors. These materials handle changes in grade and curving garden edges better than landscape timbers. They create a distinct, neat border, although installation is more time-consuming and challenging. Interlocking pavers generally need no mortar to stay securely in place; mortar may increase the durability of a brick or stone border, although setting bricks or stones properly in a prepared trench is usually sufficient. Bricks, pavers and thick stones set flush with or extending only slightly above the soil surface also create an excellent mowing strip that eliminates trimming around the garden.
Concrete edging creates a tidy edge, is very durable and is potentially implemented as a mowing strip so that no trimming along the garden's edge is needed. However, its relative permanence can limit garden expansion and other landscaping possibilities, and the concrete can be fairly difficult to install. The concrete is either poured directly in position in a form built for the edging or is created one section at a time in a mold before it cures and is set in place.
Plastic, Bender Board or Metal
Plastic, bender board or other composites are generally more affordable than other edging materials such as bricks or pavers. The flexibility of plastic or metal edging makes them fairly simple to install around a garden with a curving border. For installation of these types of edgings gardeners dig a trench and attach the edging material to stakes that they then pound into the ground. However, plastic and metal edgings are generally considered less attractive than other materials, though bender board is often designed to look like wood. Plastic can break from foot or mower traffic.
- The American Gardener: SmartGarden -- Maintaining an Edge
- Johnson County K-State Research and Extension: All About Edging
- The Complete Guide to Landscape Construction; Creative Publishing International
- Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images