How To Edge Flower Gardens

Edging Flower Gardens

Edging flower gardens is an easy DIY project once you understand how to do it properly. Edging is a method of creating a clean line between your lawn and a flower garden or other landscape feature. The simplest and cleanest looking edging is just a method of “cutting” back the edge of the lawn.

There are other more decorative methods that involve structure such as landscaping stones, pavers, wood and even that cheap looking black plastic. However, none of that is really necessary if you edge your lawn properly with a half mood edger.

Benefits of Edging

Besides the obvious aesthetic reasons for edging your flower gardens there are some performance benefits. Without a proper garden edge, your flower garden is susceptible to invading grass stolons which allows the grass to take root and spread outward. Proper edging also helps keep your mulch in the garden where it belongs instead of spread all over your lawn.

How To Edge A Garden

Edging the flower garden is very easy with a half moon edger. A half mood edger looks like a shovel except it has a “half moon” shaped plate on the end used to cut a nice straight line in the grass sod. It has a lip on top of the blade where you place your foot to apply downward pressure on the blade to cut the sod.

Before you start edging it’s a good idea to have a plan for the shape of the flower garden. You can either mark it out with some marking paint or lay out a garden hose in the pattern you’d like. Then you just walk around and cut the sod in a nice clean line.

Once you’ve cut the sod around the perimeter of the flower garden you’ll need to remove the sod that’s left behind on the garden side of the cut. You should remove at least 3-inches of sod so there is a minimum of 3 inches of soil showing.

The key to a successful edge is making sure that once the mulch is applied to the garden that the edge is still exposed down below the grass roots. This keeps the grass stolons from spreading into the flower garden.

So there you have it. Cutting nice clean edges into your flower gardens isn’t difficult at all. The key is keeping that edge free from mulch and soil so the grass and weeds cannot spread back into the garden. Maintenance is easy too, just use a weed trimmer to clean up the edge all season long.