Plants for Edging or Borders

To better define the transitional area between lawn and garden beds, often an edging or border is used -- in the form of a row of bricks or band of gravel or even plant material. Plant edging also helps create geometric parterres. Edging plants need to be compact, low and not have a tendency to uncontrollably sprawl. The edging ideally grows to form a rather neat, well-defined edge; otherwise, it looks jagged and unkempt. Pruning the plants is an option, but such maintenance can make some edging plants look straggly and unhealthy.

Short-growing annual flower can create visually striking borders to lawns and garden beds with their colorful flowers or foliage. Sweet alyssum bears white flowers on plants that sprawl about 15 inches wide but only 3 inches tall. It works well if planted at least 12 inches away from a lawn, so there is no issue of damage from the lawn mower. The same is true of blue-flowering lobelia. Compact, upright annuals useful in making a border include wax begonia, ageratum, pansy and moss rose in sunny areas and impatiens, short-growing coleus and torenia in shadier garden locations.

Much like with annuals, perennials used as border edging in the garden need to be compact and rather low in stature. Low-growing types include candytuft, creeping phlox,, rockcress and groundcover stonecrop. Upright, tufted perennials also make attractive borders, especially lilyturf, also called liriope as well as dwarf forms of dusty miller. Dwarf mondo grass remains particularly short, only 1 to 3 inches tall. Pinks or dianthus also makes a tidy border. In shady areas, grow coral bells or hosta as the border.

Whether a border is needed in or out of the herb garden, some culinary herbs remain compact with attractive foliage worthy of a border. Parsley, lavender, rosemary and thyme can be used as borders, depending on your aesthetics of leaf color or texture. Lavender and rosemary can be continually trimmed to keep short or cut into more geometric, hedgelike forms.

Choose dwarf cultivars of shrubs to use as edging. Ideally, the shrub species is slow-growing, so any pruning maintenance is diminished each year. English boxwood, Japanese holly, dwarf yaupon and snowrose respond well to pruning or shearing to maintain a dense rounded or box-shaped border edging.

In frost-free regions, such as in subtropical and tropical regions, many shrubs and perennials remain evergreen year-round and make good edging plants. Examples include dwarf mother-in-law's tongue, bromeliads, variegated spiderplant, dwarf croton, dwarf golden dewdrop and blueberry flax.