Flower bed borders???

[Ed of all trades]

I am buying a new house, new to me, and the flower beds have stone in them and have no borders. What do you use that is easy to trim with the riding mower and keeps the mulch - stone in place? I have a weedeater but don't want to use it any more than I have to. Ed

 

[RalphVa]

If you don't want to use a weedeater, a little ditch is probably the best. I have to trim around a number of other things.

Ralph

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I am buying a new house, new to me, and the flower beds have stone in them and have no borders. What do you use that is easy to trim with the riding mower and keeps the mulch - stone in place? I have a weedeater but don't want to use it any more than I have to. Ed

Good luck with that. We use landscaping bricks...they are about 4" wide, 3" thick, and about 12 or 14" long. They are rounded on one end and have a rounded concave receptacle on the other end so they can be placed end to end and fitted together. We used them to form a border, and are set in the ground to where they extend about 3/4 to an inch above the ground. I can mow over them, but still have to use the weedeater occasionally. I can't think of a thing that I don't have to use the weedeater, except the sidewalk, and that requires an edger.

 

[EddieWalker]

My favorite border is concrete flush with the grass about 6 inches wide and deep. I dug it with a shovel, set the forms, added a stick of rebar and troweled it smooth. I rarely have to use the weed eater on it, I just run over it with the mower and that's that. It keeps the mulch in place and the grass does not spread to those flower beds. Looks like a miniature sidewalk. My best looking borders are rotting out, thin cedar logs. I mow as close as I can to them, then spray round up on what I missed. I do that a few times a year and never use the weed eater.

 

[TractorGuy]

I like the concrete idea.

I have landscape timbers around mine but several need replacing from rot. I can get the edge of the mower deck to pass over the top of the timbers and keep most of it decent but I still go around it with the weed eater several times a year. I drilled the timbers and drove rebar through them to anchor them to the ground so they wouldn't move. They are probably the cheapest option but they don't last.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

I use this Shop Oldcastle 6-Pack 3.33-ft Black Landscape Edging Sections at Lowes.com[com.lowes.commerce.storelocator.beans.LocatorStoreBean%4017111711]&pl=1&productId=3438352

It has held up great, is flexible and it will spring right back up when the tire of the mower runs over it.

 

[JRobyn]

I like the landscape blocks. You can get various sizes, shapes, and colors as desired. Easy to make straight or curved runs. It takes some work to make a little ditch to set them in, but DO THAT so that they are submerged in the soil enough to not shift around, and so that they are low enough that you can use them as a "road" for one edge of your mower.

I ditched out for mine a little extra and shoveled in some paving sand for a good "foundation" that can be easily adjusted if needed. A strip of landscape fabric under the sand helps keep the blocks from sinking and helps prevent weed growth between them.

 

[DrRod]

"better living through chemistry" as Dow used to say [I think it was them]. In any case, I rely on a precise spray of Roundup to keep things in order. Twice a year does it -- just keep the application narrow and close to the ground -- it doesn't travel.

 

[Ed of all trades]

Thanks everyone, I don't mind running the weed eater every now and then but not all of the time and if I never have to that is better. I had thought of your idea Eddie but it is a lot of work and so far I like JRobyn's idea about the landscape blocks. At least I don't have to mi them. Will be moving next month so we will see. I know I wont do it like the lawn people that have been doing it. They spray and kill everything within a foot of the bed. Ed

 

[MossRoad]

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.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

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]

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

 

[EddieWalker]

 

[Ed of all trades]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Clay45]

Seems like those used to be called "edgers".