Why is edging necessary?

1. To retain the designer’s original intent.

When landscape beds are used adjacent to a structure, the Landscape Architect or Landscape Designer must view them as an extension of the structure's form. There are two areas where landscape bed edging relates to a structure's architectural form:

a. Properly designed landscape beds can be used by the designer to accentuate portions of a buildings architectural form that is particularly strong.

b. Properly designed landscape beds unite man made architectural form to the natural surroundings. Landscape beds unite the structure to the site, making it one cohesive entity.

Unlike a building's architecture, which essentially remains unchanged over time, landscape beds receive continual maintenance. If their form is not permanently defined by landscape bed edging as landscape maintenance personnel continually reshape the perimeter of the landscape beds, their long term fate is in question.

If the designer's original form and intent for the landscape beds is retained over time, much of the landscape's effectiveness, as it relates to the architecture, will also be retained.

2. It significantly increases the level of visual aesthetics in the landscape and overall project.

This is achieved when effectively designed landscape beds are retained as they were originally intended over an extended period of time.

The lines must be clean and crisp to the eye. No matter how often a landscape bed perimeter is maintained, if it does not have effective landscape edging installed, within hours it will begin to lose its crispness to the eye.

A designer is aware that the eye first defines any form by its perimeter. Properly installed, quality landscape bed edging as subtle as it should be, gives the eye a continuous form to focus on. It is this subtle continuity of form that a quality landscape bed edging provides, that gives permanent crispness and clarity in the landscape, thereby significantly increasing the level of visual aesthetics.

3. It lessens the level of long term maintenance expense.

When a landscape bed has effective landscape bed edging installed, the viewer will naturally perceive it as a clean, crisp form. The grass that may lay over the edge will not be seen as visually obtrusive. As such, until the grass significantly obstructs the edging, a certain level of maintenance can be eliminated.