Garden edging

With some help from our fantastic neighbours - we finished the garden bed edging over the weekend.

Here's a pic from our upstairs balcony.

We previously just had the turf edge - however in a couple of weeks - the big L shaped bed on the right and top of the picture will be planted out - so we needed some edges to keep things neat and tidy.

We decided on straight lines for the edges - easier to build and maintain! Hubby is looking forward to getting a whipper snipper/edge trimmer :)

The edges were built with treated pine sleepers placed in a trench - hammer some pegs in at each end, then screw both together for extra strength (make sure you get the special treated pine screws - they have some sort of green coating on the outside). I also rigged up a string line to make sure everything was straight and level. They're raised about 12cm above ground level - there will be some mounding in the garden beds and you need about 10cm of mulch on top of the soil.

Our next step is to put a little extra soil in the beds (about 3 tonnes) so that we can have some mounding (or rise and fall) to create visual interest. Having a flat garden bed along with the straight edge would have been overly formal for our tastes.

I know nothing about garden design, so we're using Mark Ferrington - to shape the beds (the rise and fall) and place all the plants in the best location. Then we dig holes and plant all the plants and mulch ourselves. Landscapers seem to want to charge a fortune - but I know I can dig a hole and apply mulch! You get that professional look for a fraction of the cost :)