How to Easily Edge a Flower Bed

Edging your flower beds is one of those fundamental gardening tasks that every property owner should understand. Keeping up with this job will make your landscaping look sharper and cleaner. Fortunately, edging a flower bed is not a hard job, although it does require a little bit of time and effort to do it right. 

With this post, we want to present you with the basics of how to edge a flower bed properly. Of course, if you don’t have time to do this job – or simply would like to turn it over to a professional – TLC is here to serve you. We have a strong reputation with our gardening services throughout the Jackson, WY area, and we’d be proud to add your name to that list. Contact us today to learn more. 

Gathering the Right Tools

Like so many other gardening projects, the proper edging of a flower bed starts with the right equipment on hand. Fortunately, for this task, the list is pretty short –

• Edger or shovel. As the name suggests, an edger is purpose built for this job. An edger looks like a shovel, except it has a flat blade rather than a scoop, allowing you to cut clean and straight lines around the flower bed. If you don’t have an edger, you could buy one – they are rather affordable at a home center or garden store – or you could opt for a shovel. While a shovel won’t give you quite the same results as a dedicated edger, it should get the job done. 
• Good gloves. This is a job that puts your hands to the test, so having quality work gloves is a big plus. Without gloves, blisters and calluses on your hands are virtually inevitable. Try to avoid leather gloves for this application as they are rather rough and make it hard to get a good grip on the edger. Instead, look for thinner cloth gloves with a rubber coating for best results. 
• Bucket or yard waste container. As you go around the edge of the flower bed, you are going to pull out some material to collect. Add it to a bucket to move somewhere else on your property, or toss it in a yard waste bin. 
• Kneeling pad. You will do some of this work standing up, but eventually, you’ll need to get down on your knees to clean things up. That will be more comfortable if you have a knee pad available, although this is not a required supply. 

Doing the Work

With your tools ready to go, it will be time to edge the flower bed and make it look great for the coming growing season. To get started, determine where the edge is going to be for your bed. Of course, if you already have a bed that needs cleaning up, this is pretty easy. The outline is already there, so you can follow that and make any slight adjustments, if necessary. On the other hand, if you are cutting out an entirely new bed, take some time to visualize how you want it to look, and whether you want straight edges or a wavy, flowing design. 

Cutting the edge is your next step, and this is where you are likely to break a sweat and get your hands dirty. As you cut along the line with an edger or shovel, get down several inches into the earth with each cut. Once the tool is down into the turf, lean it in toward the flower bed to create a separation between the lawn and the bed. Pull away the material that has been cut and take it away in your bucket or bin. 

Once you complete the task of moving all the way around the bed to create a nice edge, add some mulch to finish things off. Be careful, however, not to mound the mulch up so high it comes even with the top of the grass or spills over onto the lawn. Keep it a couple of inches down from the top of your sod and gradually thicken it up as you move away from the grass and into the bed itself. This provides a clean finished look and makes it easier to mow around the edge of the yard without sucking a bunch of mulch up into the mower. 

Don’t Fall Behind

Edging a flower bed is not difficult, but it does get harder the longer you let it go. If you can find a way to include this task in your regular schedule of landscaping maintenance work, it will remain a quick and easy job. Has your property already fallen behind on this and other landscaping chores? Not to worry – get in touch with TLC today to learn more about how we can help with our gardening services. Thank you for visiting!