How about using either pressure treated or cedar boards set on edge and held in place with wooden stakes. Do a search on batter boards for photos and info about installing them. Otherwise, if the bed slopes more gradually toward the walks and patio, the loose material will be at its natural "angle of repose" where it will no longer slide downhill, but if you don't have enough space for it, this method won't work.

The natural edge is popular because it looks natural, is cheap (free) except for the labor to create and maintain it, and it allows you to change the bed shape or size at will.

Don't have any great ideas for you lpink, but I LOVE your walkway! Sorry you have to move...
Lizzy

If the point right now is simply to neaten up the landscaping to sell the house, I'd leave the edging the way it is. It looks neat and tidy. Very often that concrete edging is set so it is uneven, with large gaps between the pieces. This doesn't look bad.

For future reference, just because everybody else does things a certain way doesn't necessarily mean you have to also. I, meaning me, personally, *DO NOT* like the look of mounded beds. A lot of people seem to like the elevation change. I don't. I am also dealing with a lot of compacted clay that expands when dug, and doesn't settle back. So I've ended up moving a lot of dirt from point A to point B.

I'm onside for leaving the edging the way it is. If you were staying I might also suggest wood instead, but as it is... if you put something else in you will probably leave the cement edging pieces with the property anyway; why not just leave them in place? It does look tidy, it is not as ugly as several other edging options, it goes with the walkway... what, with changing jobs and moving you don't have enough to worry about :-)

The only thing wrong with it is its newness and that might be the same signal as spray paint job on a used car to a prospective buyer. Is there something you can spray on to help with toning it down, try home cheapo for "Instant Ajin'" (this is a joke, BTW or at least I think it is, they might have something like this for all I know). Could you stick something like a coloured pebble in the bum of the edging without making it look tacky?

spray paint the stones a dark green. =) Cheap fix. And anyone who wants to buy the house who cares about the yard, will probably want to do their own thing anyways. They'll probably end up changing whatever you've put there.

Leave it. looks fine if your selling.

I agree with the "leave it" comments. It is likely that potential buyers will be more interested in the caulk around your tub than your landscape in general. If the buyer is a gardener then they will want to change it all anyway...if they are not a gardener then it will fall into disrepair only to be replaced with a lawn in the future.

Good luck on the move! My house goes on the market in less than two weeks. I hope that potential buyers appreciate what I have done to improve my landscape and that it is a positive factor for the house. I am sad to leave behind young and partially completed projects, but I guess that is the way it goes.

- Brent

OK, maybe a little more info is needed. I had to take some more pics.

First, here's a picture of the "Before" deck. Looks nice, those square pavers were totally nonfunctional as a walkway and a royal pain to trim/mow. The deck was too big for my yard, and hot as hades to boot. No way to get "shade" on it tastefully, and the railing gave it a prison feel. I tried potted plants, they baked. So, thanks to IronBelly of LD forum fame, I tore it off. Once a turd, always a turd he said. Thus began my journey into landscape hell (OK, I'm joking! Don't think I'm mean-spirited!) :-)

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I asked my landscaper about edging--not needed she said. What if the beds are slightly raised? Again, not needed. OK, maybe not needed in a large yard where there is grass next to the bed and the soil has somewhere to go. So a little soil falls onto the grass, big deal. But in my yard, mulch and soil go right onto the patio and right into the cracks between the pavers to provide a haven for weeds to sprout. I was running around getting plants and amending the beds. First I tried wood, but the pavers have a hard plastic edge that they are set into that runs about three inches out. With my meager skills I couldn't get stakes into it. These ugly cement deals fit just exactly along the plastic edging. Temporary fix I thought. My long term plan was to maybe find a slate slag pile or do flat river rocks, or find some matching grey bricks. Or pay someone to install wood.

OK, here's the part that's left, photos taken this week. There are some pluses to the edging, when I come home late at night and it's dark I can see the edge of the path real good! :-) It's blurry because I was upstairs looking out the screen window.

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I'm paying a guy to put sod in the messy area in the center of all this.
But what to do around the edges? Do the cement around the whole garden and make a bright white statement? Do wood on the other part? Do the beveled edge on the other part? Take off the cement deals and sweep all the dirt into a pile?

Part of me says if you're going for "cottage kitsch" go all the way. Part of me wants to back out gracefully.
Your thoughts?

Take all the scallops out and sweep daily until the house sells. Reduce mulch or spread further into yard than present.

Susanargus is probably right but will you be there to keep it swept? The scallops look like they are ready to trip a potential buyer.

I've moved several times in the last few years, so have been both buyer & seller. You don't want to spend a lot, but a few flowers might help this scene look more finished.

I don't know how far from frost date you are in PA, but could you pop for a flat or two of already-blooming white alyssum and plant them along the edges where the scallops are now, pressing down really hard where the mulch meets the walk?

Annie

Are you saying that this is all the edging you have and don't want to buy more? I don't blame you. So you're getting sod on the one side; that will solve your problem on that side. The two sides of the path can be different. Take the edging away from the sod side, and use it to finish the job on the other side alongside whatever building that is back there - doesn't look like a garage but it's not the house, right?? Grass is not just handy next to beds but next to pavers. On the side where you have the narrow bed, keep the darn edging. It looks tidy, which is all that matters. And if you take it out, you will have a pile of edging, which will be messy - you will not move it with you and will not be able to throw away (you said you still have your square pavers, so....).

Are you sure you're not focussing on this little problem to avoid dealing with other aspects of moving that you'd rather not face...:-)

Well, to me the yard isn't a "little problem." It's the biggest mess of anything I have to fix on the house to make it sellable. The right side is weeds and junk.

Here's a pic of the bed before the scallops.
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I'm no computer drawing whiz, but here's three options, part white, all white, no white.
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Also, I'm going to pay the landscaper to do it so I want to decide now what to tell him.

Thanks for the help and advice.

I know the yard isn't a little problem, I meant just the edging.

But I've never seen a little problem that I can't make more complicated - and I'd suggest you solve the edging problem by changing the shape of the lawn. Run the sod right to all the yard perimeters - make the whole right hand side a lawn and skip any planting areas on that side.

You may remember my yard that I posted pictures of last week or so on the thread about stepping stone placement. I got to that layout - the path through the lawn - by spending weeks and weeks thinking about how to edge a central patch of lawn with beds around it (dilemma posted at the link below), and how to keep the dirt in the flowerbed and off the brick pathway. In other words, my original plan was just like what you have drawn here, and I decided that edging it would be too much of a nightmare, not to mention that it created perimeter beds, so I recrafted the whole thing so that all edges would be grass meeting rock.

I had to put the path through the lawn (now with a flower bed alongside) because I needed a place for my plants. But you're moving. Maximum saleability is probably accomplished by leaving less planting space, not more.

So my suggestion would be to edge the whole left side. On the right, put sod all along the path to meet the end of the patio. You could even grass over that planting bed you have planned nearest the house, in which case you would need NO edging at all on the right. If you decide to have that bed, then you would have to edge between it and the patio.

Here is a link that might be useful: Shape of lawn question

Well Karin you do understand my dilemma! :-)

I did think about this option
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The "permimeter" beds are all perennials that escaped from my former neighbor's yard. She had a lovely perennial bed that the new owners proceeded to weed whack and grind up. My original plan called for replacing the perennials with shrubs mostly for privacy.

But now that I'm leaving I thought I would just weed up the perennial beds, mulch them and let the new owners decide whether to keep them or not. I could tear them out. It seems a shame to get rid of something just to get rid of it. I can't see putting grass all the way to the patio, that's about 200 dollars worth of tree and shrubs and perennials I have just planted there last fall--dwarf mt. laurel, japanese red maple, japanese silverbell, juniper, ferns.

I like that option! Or what about expanding the lawn still further, taking it all the way to the patio, and just letting that pointy bed extend into the bed on the right side of the patio? That takes out that awkward-looking bend in the edge of the lawn. You could make a nice curve to complement the shape of the path.

It makes sense to leave some shrubs along the fence as privacy is likely to be a transferrable need, but other than that I wouldn't let the value of your plants drive your decision-making, based on stories I hear like the one you just told about the fate of your neighbour's plants. The value of plants obviously doesn't drive buyers. Can you give any of your perennial plants away, move them with you, or donate them somewhere? The bed on the left of the pathway might survive if you sell to gardeners (actual or aspiring), but I wouldn't put any bets on plants between lawn and patio.

Don't think about what YOU want; think about what the average home owner wants. The sad fact is that "wall to wall" grass and your old "on stage" deck would probably make your house more marketable. That is mostly because it is what people are familiar with.

If you had a lush and mature retreat in your backyard that would be great, but you do not and you will not have one in the next month. Try to focus on the items that are negatives to the average shopper. The edging is not to your taste, but it is not a negative. Weedy areas are negatives that should be dealt with, and it sounds like you are doing that. You cannot "complete" your backyard transformation this week, so don't try. Even if you could, you would be wasting your time and money on something that most shoppers do not care about. Also, I would not put edging around the lawn perimeter.

BTW, if you don't already have it, you can squeeze it into your budget, and you can use it at your new place, then I would recommend a decent set of patio furniture. It will go a long way toward dressing up your backyard and making it feel inviting.

- Brent

It is hard to say what potential buyers might want. I agree that gardens would not be a big selling point to most. That yard has southern exposure, so it is boiling hot a lot of the time. About half my neighbors have roofs extending from the back of the house over their patios. One has an arbor. Three have decks and they never use them, never sit out there for the same reasons I never did I imagine. At first I thought I would love the deck, but I was always on display and then there was the heat. There is a large tree planted in that area next to the patio on the right that juts out, it doesn't show in the picture due to the bark being grey and no leaves on it now.

The reason I had a garden up against the garage is that I didn't like sitting outside and staring at a brick wall. Maybe I can buy some of those giant plastic butterflies and attach them to the garage wall! ;-)

The area on the left was a royal pain to mow due to it's odd shape. You could barely turn the mower and I had to trim the end where it tapered. That's why I went with a tree and groundcovers there. The perennials in the rest of the yard are nothing special, I am going to dig them out and do grass in as much of it as I can. Now if I can just resist planting that last blueberry bush my plan called for!

This is what you do pinko: relax.
When you bought this place you saw some potential that the previous owners missed, idiots that they were. Well now you are the idiots presenting potential to the new owners so leave some space. Did I say relax, the new buyer is not going to buy work, we get paid for work.