Who says every garden bed must be edged with military rows of prim, plump marigolds or ageratum?
There are several uncommon but equally decorative edging plants and dozens of vegetables and fruits that look good enough to eat—and are.
Are petunias too flamboyant and sprawly for your small, full-flowering bed?
Try some of the ornamental grasses. For creating special effects with foliage, flower, or fruit, many off-beat edgers are just what the border ordered.
How To Use Edgers
There are, of course, many ways to use these edgings. To outline the boundary of a formal border, they should be planted close enough so that each plant blends into the next, making a continuous line—usually straight, not curved.
At the edge of informal beds, low plants are not usually lined up in a row but planted at irregular intervals and often in small clumps to “face down” taller plants behind.
Combining formal and informal plantings is generally unwise and undecorative; they just don’t go together.
Temporary Edging
Some of these plants can be used for temporary edgings until young perennials grow large enough to fulfill their function.
Many have pretty appeal in the front of foundation plantings, at the base of a tree, or as trimming around a lamp post or mailbox.
Most can be used effectively alone or in combination with plants of other types. There are some delightful edgers in the vegetable and fruit category.
Radish foliage is refreshing (perhaps spotty when you’ve nearly eaten the crop) for a few weeks, to be replaced by warm-weather annuals.
A border of feathery carrots last even longer, thin seedlings only an inch apart, and pull and eat alternate plants while they’re still baby-sweet and succulent. Both of these vegetables are best used in formal lines.
Informal Edgings
For informal edgings, try lettuce, particularly the varieties that stand well in hot weather.
The small, tight heads of ‘Bibb’ are pretty but less lasting than loose-leaf ‘Grand Rapids’ or its longer-lived relative, `Slobolt,’ with thick clusters of ruffled leaves.
Pick and serve the outer leaves and let the rest remain as decoration. All-America ‘Ruby’ also holds up well, and its finely frilled, wine-red foliage is extremely effective.
Neat Edge in Garden Walks
As a neat edge along garden walks, strawberry ‘Baron Soiemacher’ can’t be beaten. It’s a perennial, to be started from seed or small purchased plants.
It’s laden all summer with small strawberries (delicious when crushed and smothered in sugar).
And each plant can be divided into several, each spring to extend your edging to any length at a minimum cost.
Edging With Herbs
Among the herbs, there are many attractive edging plants. Parsley, of course, and chives.
If the chives aren’t cut too severely, they make airy fountains of foliage and rosy purple flowers.
Salad bur-net is a perennial from which you can cut cucumber-flavored leaves for salads. The first-year seed is sown.
Sage for Edging
Sage is offered by one supplier in “low, compact form” for edging; plant it close and keep it clipped.
Another grower has the variety ‘Tricolor,’ with gray-green leaves marked with white and pink, that stays naturally under one foot tall.
Winter savory is also recommended as an edging plant. Or try fragrant lavender with white-felted leaves, and clip it to any size or shape.
Munstead Strain
The Munstead strain is especially dwarf and plump; ‘Ilideote’ is hardest for northern gardens.
One caution about planting edibles with ornamentals — dispense them with sprays and dust. You can’t put insecticides on one plant without the danger that it will drift over to something you intend to eat.
And then, there are grasses! Not the fast-spreading perennial types, of course, but several that keep clumpy and make utterly delightful edgings.
Variegated Oat Grass
One of my favorites is variegated oat grass (Arrhenatherum tuberosum variegatum).
Even lighter and airier, and silver-blue in color, is blue fescue (Festuca ovina glauca) with tight, upright sprays of round, wiry leaves.
It seems to be indestructible. Lily-turf (Liriope spicata) has extra assets in its spikes of wee blue flowers followed by waxy blue-black berries.
Lovely Flowering Annuals
There are also several lovely flowering annuals infrequently used for edgings. For example, six-inch nemophila, called baby blue eyes, produces white-eyed, bright blue flowers all summer in the sun or semi-shade.
Dimorphotheca, Cape marigold, stays under one foot while it fills out into plump little bushes with large daisy-like flowers in glowing South African hues.
Echium’s blue cup flowers nearly cover the compact, ten-inch plants. Six-inch linaria `Fairy Bouquet’ makes a mosaic of miniature snapdragon flowers.
Phacella is available in the low form, P. campanularia, with bronzy green leaves and wide open blue, white, or purple flowers.
44659 by Bernice Brilmayer