Its been awhile since I have given any big house updates. Nothing that I am doing is all that interesting right now – I mean who wants to read about insulation?
One thing I am winging and DIYing is the edging of my front flower beds.
You'll remember this is what my yard looked liked when I bought my house a year and a half ago.
Then I removed that lonely bush and tilled up two flower beds on either side of the front door…
Since then I have had a tree come and go and plants added. I also enlisted a local lawn company to come out and fertilize which made a huge difference in the lawn.
Here is the problem though, I never could decide what kind of edging I liked for that flower bed on the right side (the left is blocked by sidewalk). It has gotten to the point that I pull weeds and grass out of these beds MULTIPLE times a week and can never seem to keep up.
Lately, I have been traveling on the weekends for weddings and such, so it was a must I take advantage of this weekend to get a bit done.
First up dig a new “ditch” to outline the flower bed.
This was easy peasy – I just took a shovel and dug about 6 in down all the way around the border of the bed
Note the obscene amount of weeds/grass – I sprayed roundup on them right before digging my border.
Next comes the edging.
My mom and I talked through a few options but I ended up settling with a rock border of sorts. However, you cant just pour rocks into your ditch and call it a day, your flowerbed and your sanity need something to hold the rock in place and block the grass/weeds.
My flower bed isn't huge but this roll of 60ft of plastic edging did the trick. Because I need a barrier for the rock I bought two rolls of edging (120ft) – one that lays against the yard and one against the flower bed.
Cut those plastic straps and lay out the edging – the sun will warm it up and keep it from coiling as much.
After laying it out grab your stakes and go to town pounding that edging in place. Make sure and space the stakes 6ft-ish apart. Some spots for me were closer than others because of the curves
For my 60 ft of edging I used 12 stakes – in total I bought 24 (a grouping of 12 for each side)
This goes pretty fast so don’t worry about it taking all day. It took me about an hour to get both sides laid in.
If you are using just the edging and not filling with rock you wont need two sets.
Its not perfect or finished by any means, but it’s a start. You’ll notice it doesn’t look perfectly straight and that’s okay. I am going to fill the gaps on the lawn side with dirt and the gaps on the flowerbed side with mulch.
Next up is pulling the, now dead, weeds/grass and adding new mulch. After the mulch is added then I can fill the ditch with rock.
The black edging will be covered with rock – all the eye will see is mulch//rock//grass
Here are a few examples:
What do you have edging your flowerbeds? Brick? Stone? Nothing but plants? Do tell!
