Rather than purchase additional stakes, a cheap and easy solution is just to buy 6-inch (15 cm) nails. Many lawn edging model kits do include anchoring stakes, but I find there are rarely enough of them. I feel it is always worthwhile securing any edging with stakes.

One would think that the more pronounced these grooves or projections are, the more effective they would be, but from what I’ve seen any lawn edging that is not staked will eventually move, grooves or projections notwithstanding. Many models of edging have grooves or projections that are designed to stabilize them.

This is doubly true in cold climates: if you’ve never heard the term “frost heave”, you’ll soon learn all about it if your edging is not staked into place. You have to secure the edging to the vertical trench wall, otherwise it would tend to work its way loose over time. The next step is the most crucial… and unfortunately less often applied. The top of the border should be about ½ inch (1.25 cm) above the ground: not so high that the lawnmower is likely to hit it, but still high enough to prevent turf grass rhizomes trying to climb over it. Place the edging in the trench, pressing it against the vertical wall. To install plastic edging between a lawn and a garden, inset a spade vertically all along the turf edge to a depth equal to the edge’s height, and push the earth forward, toward the garden, creating a trench with a vertical wall on one side and a wall with about a 45° angle on the other. Leave it in the sun for an hour or two, though, and it will be more malleable, more readily adopting the shape you want to give it. It is easier to work with plastic edging on a relatively warm day: it is usually sold rolled up and will try to hold this form when it is cool. As a result of this experience, I would only recommend hammer-in types to someone with truly arable, stone-free soil, certainly not hard clay or rocky soil. And though they were supposed to go in without any trenching, I ended punching a slot in the ground with my spade so I could insert them more readily. It certainly seems easy enough, but I found them much harder to install than lawn edging sold in rolls: I kept hitting stones and rocks and then having to dig in to remove the obstacles. Typically lawn edging is sold in rolls of varying lengths, but there are also hammer-in types made of small segments that fit together and that you pound into the soil with a rubber mallet. Hammer-in edging: harder to install than it looks. 6 inch (15 cm) lawn edging is harder to find, but worth it. Go for 5 inches (12 cm) at the very least. I’ve seen inexpensive lawn edging only 3 inches (7.5 cm) high, but grass rhizomes will simply go right underneath them and come up in your flower bed or vegetable garden: exactly what you were trying to prevent! 4-inch (10-cm) models are much more widely available… and also let grass through. The major factor to look for in lawn edging is the height. Which should he buy?ĭespite the claims of the various brands that theirs is stronger, more durable, etc., in fact, just about any plastic lawn edging will prove itself strong enough and durable enough, again as long as it is installed correctly. My first plastic-edged beds are now over 20 years old and the inexpensive edging is still doing fine.Ī gardener looking for plastic lawn edging faces a dilemma: there are so many models on the market. Call me plebeian, but I don’t mind the occasional sneer of a garden snob if I can save a considerable sum and still get good results, so I put in plastic edging. More power to them, but I prefer facility to repetitive labor.Īnd then, there are sophisticated gardeners who accept lawn edging as an unfortunate necessity, but only if it is made of metal. They feel a true gardener should be willing to redefine the border every 2 to 3 weeks with a lawn-edging tool. There are gardeners who can’t stand lawn edging. Properly installed, lawn edging is not obtrusive and saves a lot of effort.

Black metal landscape edging