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There are several ways you can spruce up your yard aesthetics, but one of the best beginner-friendly landscape design ideas is with flower bed edging.
Garden edging is a fabulous way to make your flower bed pop with its various styles, shapes, and designs—and bonus, it’s also an excellent way to suppress weed growth.
Edging components, like mulch, separate your flower bed from the rest of the yard and block the sunlight necessary for weeds to grow. On top of the yard aesthetics and weed suppressing, garden edging is also important to distinguish between the flower bed and the lawn so your yard stays intact while you’re mowing.
With its many benefits, you might be thinking that creating an edge is difficult. But, creating an edge is easy and can be done in as little as four steps.
When Is the Best Time to Edge Your Flower Bed?
Technically, you can edge your flower bed whenever, as long the ground isn’t frozen. But, most gardeners find late spring or early summer the best time of year, since peak growing season is coming to a halt. This is also the time of year when the soil is the easiest to work with for edging purposes.
What You’ll Need
Equipment / Tools
- Shovel
- Edge hog
- Garden spade
- Garden shears
Materials
- Mulch
Instructions
How to Edge a Flower Bed to Suppress Weeds
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Outline the Edge
You will need to cut the outline of the edge along your flower bed, and you can use either a shovel or an edge hog tool.
An edge hog tool will easily cut the line of the soil, saving some time and effort. Though an edge hog makes it easier to outline the edge, you can use a shovel for a budget-friendly edging option.
Whether you’re using a shovel or edge hog, here’s how to outline your edge:
- Shovel: Jab the tip of your shovel into the ground along the edge of your flower bed. Do this down your flower bed until you reach where you want your edge to stop.
- Edge Hog: Push the edge hog along the edge of your flower bed until you reach the end.
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Remove the Turf
Once the outline is made, take a garden spade to deepen the cut and remove the turf. Removing the turf is essential for edging a lawn to separate your garden bed from the rest of the yard.
With the garden spade, deepen the cut to between four to six inches and pull up the turf at a 90-degree angle. This angle is important for later steps.
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Trim the Grass
Trimming the grass is an optional step, but it provides an added sharpness to your edge that boosts the aesthetic of your flower bed.
To do this, use a pair of hand shears to trim your lawn at the outline. Cut the grass vertically instead of horizontally to preserve the 90-degree angle you made in the previous section. Cut along the entire outline of the edge to add sharpness to your flower bed.
Trim Often
Remember to trim your edge multiple times during the warmer months while the grass is growing to keep your edge neatly groomed.
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Fill With Mulch
The final step is to add mulch to the edge of your flower bed. The mulch is used to suppress the weeds by blocking sunlight and add a richness in color to the aesthetics.
After determining how much mulch you’ll need, lay down two to three inches of product in your flower bed and bring it all the way to the edge to create a downward slope. The top layer of the mulch should line up with the top of the yard and begin the gentle downward slope.
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