Natural Stone Edging for Flower Beds

History

• Natural stone edging found favor among gardeners in the late 19th century. Wilhelm Miller of New York visited England for the periodical “Garden & Home Builder” in 1910 and reported on the trend toward using stone, brick, cast iron or tile as permanent edging for gardens. The best effect, he noted, came from using rough-dressed stone of different lengths taken from the neighborhood. William Robinson, an influential gardening journalist of the era who championed “wild gardens,” advocated natural stone edging overgrown by living thyme or bellflower. Ivy and lichens growing over the stone obscured chisel marks from rough dressing. Robinson called natural stone the finest permanent edging for a garden and wrote that “no effort should be spared to get it.”

Sources

• Look for natural stone from the local landscape, including your property, nearby construction sites, neighboring fields, and mountain roads after storms, Over time, you can scavenge enough natural stone for your garden beds and support a tradition of piecing together your supply of stones as salvage. Alternatively, you may buy machine-split pallets of stone, including fieldstone, broken quarry stone, sandstone and creek boulders at a builder’s supply yard.

Preparation

• If you want a typical gently curving shape for your flowerbed edging, place a garden hose in a serpentine shape and move it or tweak it over a few days to see if you like its pattern, advises Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture. Once you have the shape you want, you may lay the stone edging unmortared so you may rework the design over the years or fix frost heaves; or you may mortar it into place to stand up to mowers, wheelbarrows or rototillers.

Installation

• Stack natural stone edging into multiple layers with stones overlapping so none of the ends of touching stacked stones line up, to serve as a retaining wall for a raised bed. If you want natural stone edging as a lawnmower base, sink the edging so the top lies just about flush with the ground. Dig a 4-inch trench with an edger and shovel, and pour gravel 2 inches deep for drainage as well as 2 inches of sand in this small trench. This helps to level the stone, which you may put in place with the dressed or flattest natural surface on top.