The view of your garden is critical. It is about the well-manicured grass, the beautiful flowers, and how the edges are trimmed and maintained for many people. Garden edging, therefore, forms an integral part of every garden.
While there are different types of garden edging you can employ, you need to look at a design and material that gives the desired look. The common materials include wood, bricks, stones, plastic, and metals such as steel and aluminium.
Most landscapers and homeowners are embracing the use of metal for garden edging because of their immense advantages. These advantages include:
- They give smooth and graceful curves.
- Effectively stops the spread of grassroots.
- Not easily damaged by the garden maintenance tools.
- They give a precise, sleek, and refined look.
- Perfectly resist ground movements that are created from extreme weather like excessive rain.
- It doesn’t crack, rot, or chip – meaning they last longer while requiring little maintenance.
Though metal garden edging packs lots of advantages, it is a bit pricey. Again, steel garden edging has one more disadvantage – it’s a bit bulky. You’ll be dealing with about 225 pounds per 100 feet. But you’ll get a professional look.
Steel Garden Edging
Steel has a reputation of being strong; hence long-lasting. It has a thin profile but can hold its shape while pushing back the eroding earth without giving in to pressure. So, steel might be an excellent option for garden edging if you live in areas prone to earth movements due to frost and rain.
You can buy treated or untreated steel, and both will perform outstandingly. Untreated steel is silver but develops some degree of rust (rust patina) with time. This rusting blends perfectly well with your garden. Keep in mind that steel corrodes, but at a painfully slow rate – that’s why it lasts up to 40 years in your garden.
Steel edging is an excellent option for driveways, paths, and garden lawns. There are many steel garden edging ideas you can utilise to give your space an admirable look. Good thing; steel comes in different thicknesses and finishes to prevent erosion of the edge.
Steel is flexible, which is great for creating those perfect curves. However, having a long piece of steel for edging reduces flexibility. So, getting the desired curve can be much harder. Besides, longer lengths of steel make it tougher to fit in a straight line. Flexibility varies with thickness – thicker borderline steel is much harder to bend than their thinner counterparts.
Curves, Corners, and Fixings
There are hundreds of steel garden edging ideas, but the primary thing is, working with steel can be a little tricky. Getting perfect curves, fixing, and corners require expertise. If you need to cut the steel, you’ll need specialised tools, but small tools can achieve the goal too. If you are creating something tailor-made, have a blueprint to avoid mistakes.
Before settling on particular curves, check out the flexibility of steel. Best of all, experiment with the curves on-site – try to create what you desire. Creating professional corners is mandatory. That would mean making a V-cut groove on the front side of the strip.
The steel strips are usually 100 feet long and might have overlapping connections. Its standard height is between 3 and 5 inches. You’ll choose the height depending on the size of protrusion you want above the ground.
If you want to curtail the spread of the creeping grass and have enough stability, immerse the steel at least 2 inches into the ground.