Flower bed borders???

Complete Turf Care · May 31, 2016

About 1/3 of my business is landscape installation and maintenance. 90% of the time when we install some type of edging, we use 4" metal edging. It's 4" tall and about 1/8" thick and is sold in 20' sections. It bends fairly easily, but for sharp bends we heat it with a torch to bend it. It will last about 20 years, and is very easy to 'weedeat' up against it.

The bricks or stones are nice, but their design allows grass to grow between them making it harder to keep neat.

To me, the metal edging looks more natural than the green col-met stuff you get at the big box stores. And its easier to work with, if you have a torch.

MossRoad · May 31, 2016

I always liked the look of metal edging in commercial applications.

EddieWalker · May 31, 2016

Ed of all trades · Jun 1, 2016

I am beginning to think that whatever I do it will be good and bad. Ether it costs a lot and is a lot of work or it will be a make do kind of thing, maybe both. Thanks for the tips guys, still thinking. Ed

TractorGuy · Jun 1, 2016

CompleteLawnCare said:
About 1/3 of my business is landscape installation and maintenance. 90% of the time when we install some type of edging, we use 4" metal edging. It's 4" tall and about 1/8" thick and is sold in 20' sections. It bends fairly easily, but for sharp bends we heat it with a torch to bend it. It will last about 20 years, and is very easy to 'weedeat' up against it.

The bricks or stones are nice, but their design allows grass to grow between them making it harder to keep neat.

To me, the metal edging looks more natural than the green col-met stuff you get at the big box stores. And its easier to work with, if you have a torch.

Have you got a link to this stuff?

Clay45 · Jun 1, 2016

I've got to do the same thing. Last two homes I found I prefer to alternate edging materials on the borders of my bed with a wood-stone-Lirope/monkee grass theme. Equal length sections but not everything the same. The wood may be of different kinds, sizes and shape, the rocks/boulders different size and color. I try to keep the lirope the same in each yard but not necessarily the same for the entire house. The finer blade monkey grass offers a softer textur, the varigated lirope is beautiful when in an area that permits it to grow fully and enjoy a long growing season. The dark bladed lirope and monkey grass are more hardy, the varigated more fragile.

buckeyefarmer · Jun 1, 2016

MossRoad said:
We tried plastic edging many times. It works for a few years, then tends to move up and down or in and out as you bump it with the tractor or frost heaves it. So now, as it wears out, I yank it out and as someone else mentioned, I dig a little ditch with a step edging tool like this. I just cut straight down into the sod and flip the piece into the flower bed. When I'm done I go back and pick up the pieces. It leaves a 90 degree angle at the grass edge and about a 45 degree angle up into the bed. I do it once per year and that keeps the grass from growing into the flower beds all year long. From what I've read, when the grass roots hit the open air at the edge of the trench, they stop growing. Seems to work for us.

View attachment 470425

Landscapers do it that way.

MossRoad · Jun 1, 2016

buckeyefarmer said:
Landscapers do it that way.

Well call me a landscaper! :laughing:

I did get the yard looking nice for a party this weekend. Happy wife, happy life! :thumbsup:

dan ny escarpment · Jun 2, 2016

A good quality (forged) long handled square spade, and the landscaper's method decribed above is my once a year effort to keep many hundreds of feet of bed edges cleaned up, with string trimming to keep tidy after that. A good long handled spade is not easily found in big box stores any more, (cheap stamped steel) and even the Amish "everything" store in OH no longer stocks them. Bought one online from some outfit in new england maybe 10 years ago which is still rock solid. You can obviously make one by attaching a long handle to a square blade, but I have snapped a couple that way over the years. I've found the square blade works better than the circular sod cutter blade, for me any way. The effort required is no small thing, to be sure, using this method, but the results are decent.