 Growing Gardens
with Julia Hancock
Getting edgy
How to you edge your garden beds? Very often the answer is ‘with whatever I can lay my hands on'.
Garden edging can be cheap or expensive, temporary or permanent, hard or soft. When making your decision, it's important to select a type that suits your garden.
Hard edging
Hard edging is the most durable and permanent of soil retainers, and comes in the form of bricks, cement, stones and treated pine logs. New bricks are best in a modern, formal garden but old bricks can look charming in a cottage garden and can be laid at a 45° angle to make a very pretty border for flower beds. Cement edging is great between beds and lawn and can moulded to fit the most curvaceous designs. Stones of all sizes and sorts look great in a bush garden or a rustic situation where rocks are a prominent feature in the wider landscape.
Treated pine logs have become popular both in modern and traditional gardens because they are easy to use, and although they are expensive to purchase, they will last up to 40 years. Rolls of half logs wired together are a handy solution for small areas or circular beds.
Soft edging
Taking the soft option involves utilising plants to form the border between bed and path or lawn. The advantage is that they are attractive, natural-looking and once they're in, they either become part of a permanent display or can be changed according to the seasons. Edging plants should be low-growing and non-invasive – there's nothing worse than getting a trailing stem caught up in the mower, or having to constantly cut back a plant that's growing over a path.
Uniformity is the key in formal gardens, using one species such as mondo grass or clipped Buxus. In informal gardens the options are infinite.
Lismore Garden Club
 Starting this Sunday, September 2, judging begins in the Spring competition, so here's a few handy hints to help gain you judging points for your garden.
Hoses should be wound up and put out of sight. Make sure the lawn is neat and all dead flowers have been removed – the more pleasing it looks to your eyes, the same for the judges.
Looking into this season, you should have planted your vines – cucumber, zucchini, and some of the new tomatoes, like Zola, Hawk and Grosse Lisse, Spring flowers, if you look after them, should last until the end of October, depending on the temperatures.
Happy gardening
Don 6624 3855
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