Edging around a garden border serves to contain dirt, soil or spreading groundcovers while also excluding creeping turfgrass and side or vehicle traffic. It also contributes to the general aesthetics of the landscape. A broad range of edging types are potentially implemented around a garden’s border and fluctuate in ease of maintenance and installation, permanence, appearance and other features.
Trench or Cut Edge
A trench, or cut edge, border merely involves cutting a trench or V-shaped dump into the ground across the edge of a garden and requires no edging substance. A sharp spade or edger is used to make a trench 4 to 6 inches wide with a similar depth. Occasional re-cutting through the entire year is needed to maintain grasses from growing into the garden, but this type of edging permits for garden expansion or the addition of a different edging material later.
Wood
Landscape timbers, logs or standard construction timbers used as competition around gardens are rather durable and affordable and also can attract a natural or rustic feel to the website. Wood can potentially create a raised edge or, installed flush with the dirt, serve as a mowing strip. When it isn’t placed in a prepared trench, lengths of rebar, spikes or similar hardware are pounded through pre-drilled holes to guarantee the wood in place.
Bricks, Pavers and Stones
Various types of bricks, pavers and stones can function as fashionable and durable garden edgings and are available with many different shapes and colors. These materials handle changes in curved and grade garden borders greater than landscape timbers. They create a distinct, neat border, although installation is more time-consuming and challenging. Interlocking pavers generally need no mortar to remain securely in place; mortar may increase the sturdiness of a brick or stone border, although setting bricks or stones properly in a prepared trench is generally sufficient. Bricks, pavers and thick stones set flush with or extending only slightly over the ground surface also make an excellent mowing strip that eliminates trimming around the garden.
Concrete
Concrete edging creates a tidy edge, is very durable and can be potentially executed as a mowing strip so that no trimming along the garden’s edge is needed. But its relative permanence can limit garden expansion and other landscaping choices, and also the concrete can be pretty difficult to install. The concrete is poured directly in position in a kind constructed for the edging or is created just 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 typically cheaper than other edging materials such as bricks or pavers. The flexibility of plastic or steel edging makes them quite 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 into bets they then pound into the ground. But steel and plastic edgings are usually considered less attractive than other materials, though bender board is frequently designed to look like wood. Plastic can break from foot or mower traffic.