Garden Borders & Garden Art

Rental Tools you Need

You probably have a tool rental yard near you

that you can rent anything you need to build your gardens. Visit one and see what they have, you would be amazed.

Garden Tools

You may have your own garden tools on hand or need to look at some new innovative ones that may help make your gardening easier. Either way you should enjoy the look and feel of your new garden. Remember keep the weeds out and keep it moist not flooded and you should benefit from your labor.

Packets of seeds or already started

Weather you use plant seeds or pre-started plants, trees or bulbs, there will be instruction on their containers that will tell you what kind of weather and elements of heat or shade they will grow best in. Just follow the instructions or make notes and write down the type and name of the plant, etc to buy later after you have setup your yard gardening areas to plant them in.

Where to Put the Garden

Check the sun & shade areas in your yard and see where they fall at what times of day. Make notes so when you find the plants, trees, vegetables or bulbs you want to put in the ground you will have that gardening information and details with you to make a good decision of where everything will go.

Planning a Garden or Fixing a broken one...

When Walking in the garden you may think about what to plant, but you may also want to plan out where to plant. That will lead to the question of, do I put in a raised bed and if so how would I build one? Maybe you don't want that type but would like to put in just a garden border. There are all type of materials for this at warehouse stores and landscape supplies. You may want to use the waste material if there is any for some cool garden art!!!...So lets look at some of the ways you can make your own in a do it yourself garden design.

Draw an outline of your lot and house or make a copy of the one you Made on the Home Repair Checklist I gave you.

Borders or raised Beds

You can make Garden borders around a planting area by putting a wooden stake in the ground just enough to hold a nylon string between them for a straight line. Maybe you don't want a straight line. If you take a hose and shape it on the ground the way you want your border to look, then take a little flour and mark it then you can roll up the hose and there is your line to dig out the grass or weeds. Some people just put a trench there about 4 inches deep to keep weeds from invading to quickly. Ground cloth or black plastic sheet is good to keep weeds out with rock, mulch, or bark on top to keep the plastic down and it look nice also.

Other Garden Borders

There is the easy and simple to the heavy and time consuming, but all of them are worth the time for the long term of your yard. You can put in simple 2 X 4 Redwood or cedar (they don't get eaten by bugs) by just digging a trench along your string line you stretch tight between the stakes. Then using a level lay your boards end to end and attach them with a stake horizontally on the back side. I like to use screws to hold them together. When you get to the end of a run where you want to stop and go another direction. Stake out the first run by pounding a wooden stake which you can buy in a bundle at your local warehouse store, then screw the border to that stake while someone holds the level on it. Fill the bed with a good soil and compost mix. Hand mix it or rotor till it into the soil that is there.

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You can also use brick or stone borders

With these kind of boarders you will want to dig a trench into the ground that is 3 to 4 inches deep and fill it half with gravel or road base rock.

On top of that place concrete and smooth off. On top of that lay a bed of mortar and level your material as you go. The pro's generally lay a brick or stone at each end of a run. Then they pull a string line tight between them and follow the string to keep everything level or on the same plane. Your mortar should be construction grade or what they call commercial grade. Follow instructions on the bag. You can buy the material in bulk if you are doing a lot of hardscape borders.

Preparing the Soil

Either way you must prepare the soil for planting. There are many great gardening books and gardening Magazines out there that can show you these types of things. Basically you need to get rid of the weeds and grass and dig about 8 to 10 inches to loosen the earth in the bed areas. Add lots of good composted mulch and turn it in. You can do this by hand with a shovel or if you have a rotor tiller they work very well for accomplishing this task and a heck of a lot easier.