From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
One of those jobs that had been on the gardening to-do list for a while now has been to put in some brick edging around one of our front garden beds. The lawn, which butts up directly to the garden bed, continually invades it and then chokes my plants. Not to mention that it looks unsightly no matter which way you look at it.
Garden brick edging has another benefit as well in that it can instantly bring some formality into a garden which has become otherwise chaotic. Not that ours has become unwieldy but my style has always bordered on allowing plants to be plants and grow their own way with minimal shapely pruning. In order to achieve this they do require some limits so edging is an easy way to keep your garden subordinate to some boundaries.
Step One.
The first step in doing your own garden edging is to mark out the lines you need. Whether you are cutting into the lawn, like I am, or starting a garden bed from scratch you will need to set your dimensions initially. In this example, it's a fairly simple proposition as I'm only edging one line.
Set out a string line that runs the full length of your proposed edge. Once you're content with the dimensions, walk beside it with a spray can marking a clear line.
Step Two.
Cut into the lawn directly above the line and remove the sods of turf. This will highlight the line for where the edging is about to go.
Step Three.
Before the brick edging can be installed, you must make sure that any reticulation/irrigation pipes have been removed, replaced or transferred. Once the bricks are down it's not an easy process to get them out again. In my case, I had to move all our sprinklers forward so that they would sit in front of the edging and be useful to watering the garden.
Step Four.
Now that all the initial preparation has been completed the next stage is to prepare the ground for laying the bricks. The idea with this is to give the bricks a solid footing for them to sit on.
In most cases, using soft yellow sand will be sufficient however if your garden experiences problems such as flooding you may want to consider a more stable option. In this example I'm using roadbase (crushed gravel) as a foundation for the bricks. The benefit of roadbase is that it is easy to work with but will set hard as rock once it's in place.
NB. If you have a couch lawn where runners can grow well beneath ground level, I would highly recommend that you install a plastic edging strip between the lawn and the garden brick edging. This will hinder it's growth back up into your garden beds.
Step Five.
Now the fun part begins. Laying the bricks is probably the most satisfying part of this job and as they are being laid you can start to see the garden bed taking shape. I would recommend that you reinstate the string line to keep your brick edging straight and to give you your height levels while laying.
Start at one end and get the first brick at the right height and correct levels. Then you can start laying the rest of the bricks from this one keeping them straight with the string line.
If you need to make any cuts these can be done at the end using a brick saw (which can usually be hired for the day) or if you only have a few to do then fit an angle grinder with a stone cutting blade.
Step Six
The final step is to bed the bricks in. While I haven't done this, some people like to run a line of cement along the bricks on the garden bed side. This does help in securing the bricks from movement but unless your bricks are going to be walked on continuously, it is a little overkill.
The only step that I would suggest here is to brush in some coarse river sand into the cracks between the bricks to stop any movement.
From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
