Harmony Hills Home and Garden: 3 Easy Steps to Get That Professional Edging Look

Hi friends! Today we're going to tackle one of the most common home gardening projects: edging a flower bed to get that professional edging look. This is one of the fastest ways to make your garden look absolutely great! Having a crisp, clean dividing line between your lawn and your flowerbed is, well, I think it's the BEST thing you can do to make your yard look well cared for. I mean, this will make your yard look like you have hired the best landscaping crew in town to come in every week and pamper your yard!

Let's take a look at some examples of awesome but simple edging on a flower bed:

source

Both of the examples show a simple edge between the grass and the flower bed, and they look great!

3 Easy Steps to Get That Professional Edging Look

Step 1: Mark The Edge of the Flower Bed - I like to use a garden hose that has been filled with water but the sprayer is turned off. This gives the hose some "body" and tension, and it holds its shape very well. I lay out the garden hose along the shape of the flowerbed that I want to dig.

You could also use:

string tied from one stake to another to create a straight line
2x4 piece of lumber to create a straight line
landscape marking spray paint to mark a free-form edge on the ground

Step 2: Cut the Grass along the Marked Line - I use a half-moon edging tool, specifically this one. It slices into the grass like a hot knife through butter. Once the tool is in the ground, I move it back and forth front to back to loosen the sod. You could also use a square edge garden spade like this one. or, you could use a power edger like this one. I've tried all of these methods, and personally, I like the half-moon edger best. The curved bad slices nicely and easily, unlike the flat blade which requires more force, and it's easy for me to control, unlike the power edger.

Step 3: Remove the Grass - I like to grab a chunk of sod and shake the dirt loose as much as possible. Return the dirt to the flowerbed, and throw the sod into the compost bin.

Options: There are lots of decorative materials that you can use to edge your beds, like brick or stone, or vinyl edging or metal edging. All these options have the added benefit of keeping the grass from re-growing into the flowerbed. But they also have the added cost of money to purchase and time to install. Today we're going to focus on the most inexpensive method of simply cutting a border edge.

Now that I've covered the basics, let's see what it looks like in practice.

The photos I'm using here are from my yard in Raleigh, NC, where we lived prior to moving to Harmony Hills. Let's say they're from "Harmony Hills, South". :-)

Follow Me To The Garden

OK, first thing is to lay out the garden hose where you want the edge of the grass to be. Easy peasy. I like to make sure the water is turned on but the spray nozzle is turned off. This gives the hose a lot of body and it stays where you put it... if the hose is empty, it can curve where you don't want it.

The next step is to push the edger into the grass right along the line that your'e following. Easy! LWiggle it a little forward and backward to loosen the sod. then lift up, move along the line a little bit, and repeat.

Last, pull the grass out and shake off the dirt. Why don't I have a photo of that step? Hmmm, not sure. Sorry about that! Any extra dirt should be piled up into the flowerbed to make a nice mounding hill. There will end up being a little bit of a trench between the grass and the bed. This is called an "English Border", I suppose because it was the way the English did it in their gardens.

The final result is a beautiful clean edge on the grass.

What should you do over the course of the season when the grass grows and wants to climb back into the bed? In our yard, we like to use a string trimmer (a.k.a. weed whacker or Weed Eater™) once a week when we're mowing the grass. We just run it along the grass edge to cut off any runners that are coming out of the grass into the flowerbed. Then once a year we repeat this edging process. The years following the first time are MUCH easier to do, especially if you've kept after it with the string trimmer each week.

Here are some photos of our nicely edged flowerbeds here at Harmony Hills in Baltimore:

See how neat and clean they look, especially with the fresh layer of new mulch on the flowerbeds? It's pretty awesome! And it was easy - just a little bit of elbow grease and a little bit of time.

Go on out to your yard and take a look at your edging. Does it need to be cleaned up a little? You can do it!