Garden stuff – Log edgings as a border.

Is this actually a good idea? 18″ logs.

It’s cheap and I like the idea of wavy patterns (aware it will make any lawn mowing a bit of a ‘mare), but am a bit dubious of how the hell I’d get it to stay upright (chuckle).

I can afford to lose 6″ (snigger) in the ground, leaving me 12″ (guffaw) as a retainer, but something just makes me think that the physics don’t add up and it’ll end up on the piss once filled full of soil, perennials and ex-girlfriends.

Anyone got this with success stories? Did you stake it somehow?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/18-Log-Roll-Border-Edging/dp/B003UNSISU

Hateful stuff. You’ll get more tufty bits around the edge than an East Europeans bikini, and it’s usually on the slant one way or the other.

looked nasty after first year – as above, slanted all over and didn’t hold a border (slope) or the lawn back well – got rid and redesigned around (halved) sleepers, oh sorry you wanted success stories…

we had some in ours – I’m ripping it out as and when I can be arsed

it’s a bit kack (yes slanty, yes tufty but also somehow interspersed with bald patches) and my wife thinks it’s ugly

Will add to the hate by saying they will rot in no time

There was some in our garden when we bought the place. They stood up ok but as above…. they rot pretty quickly, weeds grow through them and they are generally a bit rubbish.

All now replaced thankfully.

If you only need it about 125mm high, Mrs BigJohn sinks inverted wine bottles in to make birders.

Put it along the edge of a winding gravel path through rough grass, flat side to the path. Worked to keep the stones in, survived strimming, but rotted out in five years. Now someone else’s problem, and I wouldn’t bother again.

Difficult to install, a nightmare to mow around (our garden takes 10 mins to mow and 50 mins to trim **** edges), won’t stay straight, and rot in a couple of years.

We tried a different approach second time – made long planks with stakes on to hammer in, cut to the right shapes and angles. Painted the stakes and the backs with tar paint to encourage longevity.

One still doesn’t sit straight though.

Use plastic edging or decent wood. Those log rolls are rank. If you aren’t edging lawn against stone chips then you don’t need any edging, just a neat lawn edge.

As said above, don’t do it! Pain in the arse with grass growing through, staying upright and the things rotting after a while.

We’ve got pressure treated planks held in place by stakes. They’re fairly flexible so you can still have curves and ours are sunk to the same level as the grass so we can mow over it.
Some have rotted now but they were put it 11 years ago so not bad.

Cheers all! These are tanalised so should have given a few years use, and were needed to create a raised bed. Seemed a cheap way of doing it.

Warnings heeded though, will try to research alternatives that are still cheap-ish and look ok.

Happy Friday all 🙂

I installed a load this autumn, very hard to get vertical but I’m not bothered by the slant. I put it in mainly to keep the wood chippings in the flower beds as the cats keep raking them onto the lawn every time they go to the loo. It definitely fixed that problem.

Untitled by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

These are tanalised so should have given a few years use

So were ours – lasted maybe 3-4 years.

Yep same here.

Get on freecycle or similar for old paving slabs and then cut them down to size if needed. Lay in a trench with a little mortar and they’ll be upright, won’t rot (ever) and create straight lines to mow/trim against.

You could always build a low fence using posts and single lats – that way they’ll be above ground, won’t rot so quickly and will be easy to replace. maybe.

Failing that go with a cheaper option (happy) in the knowledge you’ll be revisiting it before too long.

I like the paving slab idea.

paving slabs cut up …. will look shit.

the cut edge will look horrendous and not all cut edges can face down !

Then theres the fact that time + grinding disks + transport …. you might as well spend the 3 quid that an actual plain grey 6 x 2 x 36″ garden paving edger edger costs and have it look half decent.

As per glasgow dan though – a nicely edged lawn done by hand with a sharp half moon cannot be beat (spent my teens perfecting the art doing gardens with my grandparents gardencare and treesurgery business)

I like trail_rat’s idea better.

As per glasgow dan though – a nicely edged lawn done by hand with a sharp half moon cannot be beat

However this doesn’t work if the flower beds are necessarily higher than the lawn, as in our case. I would do that if I could, because I could then mow the whole thing instead of spending 45 mins doing the edges with f’in scissors.

I prefer a nice cut edge to. That said, my lawn is buttress straight up against a path all the way around. Easy to turn the stringer and cut against the path, and quick too.

trail_rat – Member
paving slabs cut up …. will look shit.
… you might as well spend the 3 quid that an actual plain grey 6 x 2 x 36″ garden paving edger edger costs and have it look half decent.

Personally I broke mine by hand and bit the rough edges off.

You can buy creosote from a wholesale supplier online if you make up a business name, then get some treated timber 300mm wide, slabber the stuff with the good oil and bury it along the edges 🙂 That’ll last a while.

I did my whole shed with the stuff last year. beware, it’s very runny and WILL splatter all over the neighbour’s horrible plastic shed!

Don’t do it.

I did ours last year. The installation method I adopted was thus
1) soaked the base of the wood in old engine oil for a month or two
2) membrane then pebbled the beds, leave an overlap of membrane (see number 4)
3) dug trench for log roll
4) put in membrane overlap including the front of logs
5) back fill and pack in log rol
6) trim excess membrane

No weeds so far should last a good few years still looks good and solid

Ok it does take 10 mins longer to strip to the log rolls but saves a ton of time weeding and keeping the lawn edged

Wine bottles, good shout indeed

If you want to do what everybody else & his dog seems to be doing, put some sleepers in.

Our lawn & path is edged by these with about 50% below ground.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-Garden-Sleeper-1-2m-Light-Green/p/209374

I bedded them in with just soil and surprisingly they are still upright 5 years later. Weathered to a nice grey colour.

Raised beds? old scaffolding planks or “sleepers”

To separate lawn/chippings the rolled top garden paving stuff is pretty good.

Thanks, some good ideas there.

(Esp’ Swleper about the membrane – not so sure on the 2 month oil osmosis 🙂 )

Live near the coast BN?

Our old house had a big odd shaped lawn area that was a bugger to edge, i got a load of bricks from the beach – a rocky section of our local beach is full of them, all nicely rounded edges and a nice terracotta colour – and laid them on a wee bed of mortar to keep em upright.

Looked great, need to do it again in present garden. And only cost price of mortar materials.