Why not use the black plastic but put a little mulch in front as well to help hide it. Maybe then it wouldn't be so much of an eyesore. It might not be doable but thought I would throw it out there.

Looking forward to the responses to this thread, I'm about to deal with the same issue myself.

I go edgeless in several beds....hate HATE that black plastic stuff.
a little close spray at the bed edge with round up works wonders.

Linda.... can you post a pic of what your edges look like?
I mean, where does the mulch start, depth of the trenches, angle of the cut, etc.???

Do you know what kind of grass you have?

I trench and cut straight down at least 4 inches. Remove the soil from the trench & keep it clean regularly. I don't allow mulch or other media to settle in the trench.
Gayle

I have MASSIVE amounts of grass in my beds this year.

====>>> with your system ... you have to take your straight shovel.. and recut the edge ... at least once per year.. if not twice ... and the new grass will most likely pull right out in a clump ... doing it more often makes it a much easier job.. it will never grow into the hosta ...

and yes.. filling with mulch worsened the problem ...

you need a 90 degree angle ...to at least 4 to 6 inches ... or below he grass root zone.. and it needs to be bare .. and dry ... so the grass is not encouraged ....

in my estimate.. grass is the most invasive plant in the universe ...

i go thru 100 to 200 gallons of generic roundup per year in my beds.. your fears are unfounded ... if you simply learn how to do it .... and you would still have to slice the edge.. so you dont draw the killer back into the lawn ...

i have no pix of the edging.. its been a decade and a half since i used the method ...

i would rather poke my eyes out.. rather than use ANY plastic in my garden .... and it is not PC green earth BS ... its all about a NATURAL garden ...

yeah .. its a bunch of hard labor .. but the result is so prime ..

ken

I have lamium at the edges of most hosta areas. The lamium doesn't grow much into the grass, and the grass doesn't grow into the lamium.

I can't say I did it perfectly... but treated wood can make a good border. A 2x4 or 4x4, buried even with the soil, makes a definite border and provides a flat platform to run the lawn mower wheel on. Wood is easy to cut to make angles to curve around beds. Not cheap, but cheaper and easier to use than brick or stone...

If you want the bed to hold mulch, you can "cheat" a little, leaving the wood above ground level 1/2 or 1 inch... but then the mowing is affected...

The 8' treated timbers with rounded edges are under $2 at Home Depot - cheap, but they only last a few years before rotting - poor quality - but you can cover a lot of territory in a hurry at $.25 a foot. Treated 4x4 are considerably more expensive, but I've had some in the ground for 10 years and they still seem solid and provide a nice edge. A 2x4, buried edge on, makes a distinct border similar to the plastic, but provides a nice flat 1 1/2 inch mowing edge...

And for those building wood raised beds... burying a 2x4 at ground level around the perimeter of the raised bed will remove that nasty little weed-collector edge around the bed - if you have grass there, it is a mowing strip - if it is some other material, the wood removes the endless pulling of weeds (in my case, creeping charlie!) where the weed seeds collect along the wall of the raised bed.

I know you said that you don't want to spray...and I am a very infrequent user of chemicals, but let me tell you about my experience.
For 8 of my 12 years on my property, I had to re-dig and re-do beds every other year to control the quack grass. The grass' roots went straight through the roots of other plants, and any severed quack grass root from weeding or digging would produce more grass shoots. I was such a frustrated, unhappy gardener...so much effort, so little satisfaction.
Enter Ortho's Grass B Gone: you can spray this around nearly all shrubs, trees or non-grass perennials...it will kill only the grass. (The label gives specifics to check.) Within 1 season (2 sprays, maybe 10 days apart),the quack grass in my beds became a thing of the past. The first spray showed the grass yellowing within about 5-7 days. At about 10 days, I could see which grass needed a second spritz. I have sprayed it safely around every perennial, tree and shrub in the garden, and the only thing it has killed was the intended grass. The label does say to be careful around iris, which I have been, but have never even had a wind drift problem with any of my iris. Last spring, I sprayed it right into a patch of bearded iris and the iris have shown no signs of problem. Had they been prized, named iris, I wouldn't have done it.

I do not incorporate ornamental grasses into my garden plans now, because I know that just one or two years without this spray, my problem would be back and then I'd have problems getting the quack grass out of my ornamental grasses' roots...I think it's a small price to pay for keeping that nasty stuff at bay. Right now, on my 1 acre property, I have maybe two 5' x 5' areas that have shown some grass growth, and one 2 x 4' area...that compared to previous years in which every one of my beds would be overflowing with the grass by now.

I've had difficulty finding this around here. Walmart carries it in the spring, it makes a very small footprint on the shelf and is not usually right next to the Weed-B-Gone. I buy a few bottles of it, although I've only needed 1 bottle per year since that first year...I'm always in fear of it not being available.

THE ULTIMATE LAWN EDGING...


Materials Needed:

Redimix concrete, bubble wrap (big bubbles, not little ones), cottage cheese, moss


Instructions:

(1) Find a spot in your yard or garden where your don't mind doing a little digging. Make a long narrow trench about 4-5" wide, 6-8" deep, and 3 ft. long. Use a curved-tipped spade so that the bottom of the trench has a radius. The ends of the trench should be squared off and vertical.

(2) Line the trench with a piece of bubble wrap. Pour the concrete in the trench on top the bubble wrap. Let it harden for a few days.

(3) Carefully dig around the concrete and lift it out. Flip it over and pull off the bubble wrap. Now you have a unique and interesting piece of lawn edging with lots of indentations all over.

(4) Set the lawn edging into place. Stir the moss and cottage cheese together. (You can use any dairy product including milk, sour cream or yogurt.) Paint it on the concrete lawn edging- it will soon be covered by moss and look cool! (You can use a pump-up sprayer if you use milk.)

NOTE: For a curved flowerbed, the trench must be a mirror image of the shape which you are trying to make.

I hate grass in any of my garden beds. I hate any rework, such as separating grass out of plants. I do not mind pulling out the little grass seedlings.

My successful experience over the last 30 years in zone 5a is to use heavy duty black plastic edging which shows a top which looks like a 3/4 inch black rubber hose. It comes in 20 ft and larger lengths, 6 inch deep. To install it, I cut down vertically into the soil with a sharp flat spade, leave the lawn side undisturbed. To keep the edging in place I hammer 10 inch long galvanized steel nails through the plastic into the lawn soil, one about every 3 ft, 3 inches below lawn surface under an angle down. Overlap joints. Keep the top of the edge one inch above the finished soil. After refilling the bed side with soil I stomp hard on the soil.
This works for me.
Bernd

I posted earlier, but I went out & took a couple pics after work.

First, I would agree with the method Ken describes above. Straight down cut below the root line.

I go thru the trench once every week or 2 with my hoe and clean out the trench. Sometimes I dig/clean the trench deeper in spots depending on how I'm feeling and whether it rained & displaced or if anything moved for any reason. It's really little time involved because I carry my hoe with me a lot just when wandering. As long as you keep up on it, you won't have a problem with having to re-dig and it's not a big time investment.

In my pics (just taken a few moments ago this early spring), all I have done this year is clean out the trench & mowed a couple times. What you see is just how the grass came up this spring. The grass will stay back.

As I said earlier, and was said by others, don't let soil or mulch go into the trench for extended periods of time, or the roots will have something to grow in.

If I want to take the edging to the next level, I could go thru with the shovel and adjust the edges. I could also go thru with some shears and clip any leaning grass straight up (90 degree angle) with the soil level to make it perfect.

Gayle

The rolled edge of plastic edging is nearly invisible when installed using the method described and illustrated at the link below by Don Engebretson, garden and landscape designer aka, "The Renegade Gardener." Another "must" is to use real landscapers' edging that is at least 6 inches or preferably 8 inches in depth (not the stuff from the big box stores).

One other comment: I have lamium and lamiastrum ground cover in my gardens, and grass does mingle with it -- especially when the lawn is over-seeded. I hand weed early in the season to get the grass out. If a clump of lamium comes out with the grass, it's very easy to re-establish by separating the roots and plopping the lamium back into the bed.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to install landscape edging

Thanks manyhosta,
Yes like this man describes so well, that's how I do it. Except Home Depot has that 6 inch sturdy edging. I do not buy the plastic stakes because they are too short and too expensive, get the 10 inch galvanized steel nails at less than 30 cts each instead. That edging never heaves over winter. Like one poster writes checking the edging every week, I do not need to do that, only remove seedlings occasionally and cut back some grass on the edge every 2 years. That also helps people who otherwise get a flareup of a back problem. By now I have removed all my cheap plastic edging and replaced it with the sturdy one.

For me, there is nothing worse than cleaning up the edges of the lawn. It takes time and energy that could otherwise be used to more enjoyable pursuits. When the edging is set as described above, it is almost invisible, it leaves clean edge and no more back breaking work.

A clean edge in our modern gardens looks appropriate so don't feel bad about using black plastic edging.

I don't do grass in the pathways. I use very chunky shredded wood mulch. I spread it on early in the season and it lasts one or two seasons. I use rip rap rock of various sizes to line my beds. There is uniformity on all the beds.
I spray with round up at least 6 inches from the rock to the grass to keep it from creeping into my beds. It works.