DIY Novice wrote:
We've bought a house where the garden is a bit of a jungle and I'm
planning to clean it up and have a lawn surrounded by flower beds on 3
sides with bricks as an edging between the lawn and beds.
The garden is rectangular approx 29 feet by 19 feet.
Should I put the bricks length ways or width ways?
I'm worried if I put them width ways that it'll look like a 9 inch
path around the lawn and may dominate such a small garden but my
girlfriend says the flowers and grass will grow over the edges and
they won't be so obvious. Any suggestions?
If you're just going to let things grow over the edging, then why bother
with the edging at all?
And the issue isn't really the width, but the depth. The purpose of the
edging is to prevent infultration of the hardest to remove weed of them all
into your flower beds: grass. Most grass spreads by the use of runners, and
edging is used to block those runners. Edging that doesn't go deep enough
doesn't do it's job.
So if you're going to use bricks, you wouldn't lay them side by side or end
to end. You'd stand them up, with most of the brick being below the surface.
As for whether you go face to face or side to side, it's personal taste.
What do I bed the bricks on , simply lay them on the soil or should I
create a sand or mortar base?
How permanent do you want it to be? And how easy do you want repairs to be?
Also for a small garden of this size what width should the flower beds
be? We were thinking about 3 feet wide which should be enough for some
shrubs 3-6 feet high and climbers close to the fence with some bedding
plants at the front.
Any advice greatly appreciated.
If you have any sides against buildings, leave enough room so you can get
between whatever you plant, and the building. After that, anything less than
3', in my opinion, would look goofy. Also be aware of any utility easements
near property edges. Anything you plant over those easements may some day be
unceremoniously removed for utility maintenance. That's not to say you can't
plant over a utility easement. You just need to understand how that easement
may be used. You also need to use care when digging near underground
utilities, and the effect of nearby tree roots on things like sewer lines.
What you plant, and how you arrange it depends on what kind of a garden
you're trying to create. If you have just straight edges, you may want a
formal, and somewhat symmetrical look. If you have curved edges, you'd
probably want something less formal. Can/are the beds viewed from the other
side? You may want to consider that as well.
And how much work do you want to do? The beds may require some intense work
at the beginning or ends of certain seasons, but the grassy lawn is going to
need continuous work, and require far more water than many choices for the
beds. If you want low maintenance, and lower long-term costs, maximize the
bed space, and minimize the lawn. If you have a curved edge, and some places
where the beds are too wide to work from the outside, you can provide paths
radiating into those wide parts.
You may be able to find a large garden center in your area that can provide
advice on what to do. It's not unusual for them to provide basic design
services, along with plant lists, if you're willing to buy the plants from
them. A good designer can help you make choices that match what you like,
and consider how much work you want as well. They may even be able to
suggest stages for building if it's too much work/money to do it all at
once. And choose plants that will work in your climate and soil conditions
as well. That's hard for a novice to do with general advice from folks
around the world who've never met you.
--
Warren H.
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Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
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