"DIY Novice" wrote in message
m...
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?

What do I bed the bricks on , simply lay them on the soil or should I
create a sand or mortar base?

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.

Why even bother with the bricks? I cut a bevel around my beds. The mower
wheel rides in the beveled edge and it gets trimmed when I mow the lawn.
Once a year I use a sod lifter to sharpen the bevel. It takes only a few
minutes to do an entire bed. I think that the bricks will be a big job to
install right, and the bricks and supplies will be costly - then, there is
the maintenance. I would rather spend my time, effort, and money on plants
and soil amendments rather than tending bricks. Also, when you decide to
change the size or shape of the bed, you will have to reconfigure the
bricks.

I also think that a three foot wide bed is way too small. For a natural
looking landscape you need some taller shrubs or trees, an understory
planting of smaller shrubs and perennials, and some groundcover plants. You
will find that your 3-6 foot shrubs will be 4-6 feet wide in a few years
and/or you will spend a lot of time trimming them to contain their size.
The smaller plants in front will be overwhelmed by the scale of the tall
shrubs in the narrow space. Before long it will all look very overgrown. I
think that six or eight feet is a better minimum size if you have the room.
I have to live with the limitations of a strangely shaped lot and have some
narrow beds. I have a bigger problem selecting plant material for the
narrow beds and find the constraints very frustrating and limiting.

I would recommend that before you start designing beds and laying the
bricks, that you visit some display gardens. You can often find great
gardens at historic houses, municipal gardens, and private garden tours.
Take your camera, a tape measure, and some paper for notes. Unless your
house is very formal, I would avoid making rigidly geometrical beds with
consistent width. I would avoid strict symmetry. Think about leaf texture,
size, and color because that's what you will be looking at most of the time.
Think about 4 season interest. Think about the negative spaces that connect
the bed and how it all relates to the house.