Do you want to add color to your garden or make your driveway or sidewalk look nicer? Border flowers are a great way to make your landscape more beautiful. Adding edging to your garden can make it look neat and finished. Traditional edging materials like brick, stone, or steel can stop plants from spreading into your lawn and keep grass out of your flower beds. But if you like a slightly overgrown look, like a cottage garden, traditional edging might seem too strict.
That’s where edging plants come in! You can put these plants next to the edging materials to soften the look, or use low-growing plants by themselves to outline different parts of your garden. Edging plants are the first thing people see in your flowerbeds, so they should look good in every season. These plants should bloom from spring to fall and even make your garden look nice in winter.
How To Use Edging Plants
The best edging plants catch your eye and lead it forward. For example, they can highlight a garden path and guide people where to walk. Putting colorful edging plants around a flower bed adds excitement and clearly shows where the planting space ends. For a neat look, you can use just one type of edging plant. Evergreen edging plants, like blue star juniper or creeping juniper, can give a consistent frame for your garden all year round.
A green lawn and a living fence with a pretty pink blooming edge are a lovely combo for a garden, they look chic together.
Bell-flowers paired with white tulips look fresh and cool and make the hedge in the backdrop look lively and cool.
A creative outdoor decor feature with white gravel, green topiaries, bold blooms and dark foliage as a border to add curb appeal.
A green lawn ia refreshed and spruce up with a bold blooming edge, it's not a flower bed but a more casual alternative.
Yellow and purple blooms lining up the path are a cool way to make an edge and spruce up the green lawn making it non-boring.
Use colorful blooms of various kinds to make the edge cooler and brighter and mix them up with larger blooms and plants for a bolder look.
Pink, coral and orange flowers will break the monotonous greenery of the hedge and lawn and add an eye-catchy touch.
A dark green living fence, colorful mums and little white Laurentia fluviatilis groundcovers make up a sophisticated and chic space.
Colorful tulips line up the pathway to the house and add color to the front yard the best way possible.
Euonymus is a bright groundcover plant that can be effectively and boldly used for garden edging.
Blue and pink will always be an eye-pleasing combo, and here forget-me-nots and pink tulips create a beautiful border.
If you love blue shades, creating forget-me-not edges for your shady garden will be an ultimate idea.
Bold yellow and green hedges with an eye-catchy shape and pink fuchsia bloom borders are a gorgeous combo for the outdoor space.
Evaluate Your Light Level
Before you choose your edging plants, see how much sunlight your garden gets. Plants that need full sun do best with eight or more hours of direct sunlight each day. If your garden gets less than eight hours of sun, pick plants that grow well in part shade.
Best Full Sun Plants
- Ice Plant thrives in sandy, salty soils and full sun, not frost-tolerant.
- Sedum is heat and drought-tolerant, suitable for mass plantings and ground covers.
- Salvia is low-maintenance, prefers well-draining soil, blooms from summer to fall.
- Daylily is drought-tolerant, blooms in various colors from spring to late summer.
- Garden Mums are reliable bloomers, various colors, attract butterflies
- Lavender requires full sun, can grow up to 24 inches wide, aromatic flowers.
- Coneflower tolerates heat and drought, attracts pollinators, long bloom season.
- Russian Sage is drought-tolerant, blooms throughout the growing season.
- Catmint is aromatic foliage, blooms until fall, low maintenance.
Best Shade Plants
- Hosta is best in partial to full shade, diverse leaf colors and sizes, blooms in summer.
- Coral Bells is known for colorful foliage, prefers slightly acidic soil.
- Ferns thrive in shady, moist environments, add texture to garden borders.
- Japanese Forest Grass is ornamental grass with variegated leaves.
- Mop Head Hydrangea has Large, colorful blooms, prefers dappled sunlight.
- Liriope is grasslike foliage with blue-violet flowers, tolerant of shade.
Best Part Shade Plants
- Thyme is an aromatic herb, thrives in partial sun.
- Blue Star Creeper is groundcover with star-shaped flowers, tolerates partial sun.
- Aubrieta are colorful flowers, prefers partial sun, deer-resistant.
- Wishbone Flower has showy blooms in lavender, blue, pink, purple, and white, ideal for part to full shade.
- Hydrangea has large globes of flowers, perfect addition to any summer garden.
Large green and purple succulents form a creative garden edge, these aren't blooms or groundcovers and they will personalize the space a lot.
A green hedge paired with bold purple and fuchsia blooms that bring color and interest to the space and make it bold and vivacious.
Hosta is a bold plant that has various species, and here you can see one of them lining up the path.
Hosta edging will add interest and texture to the green lawn making dark foliage and green topiaries stand out.
A refined English garden is done with green topiaries, lavender and foliage edges for a less formal and more eye-catchy look.
A modern garden bed done with green and red topiaries, lamps and lavender as an edge plant.
Lavender is perhaps the best edging plant ever as it pleases with its color, look, texture and a wonderful aroma, besides, it's butterfly-attracting.
Liriope and Mondo grass are a lovely modern combo to line up a walkway or make an edge for the garden bed.
Liriope is an alternative to lavender, with no less beautiful blooms but lower stems.
Liriope looks nice with a green lawn as it enlivens it with blooms and creates a perfect edge.
Bold Marigold edging paired with a green lawn is a more modern landscape than traditional flowers beds with blooms.
Bright Muscari edging will add color and interest to any flower bed, fence or path and will make it gorgeous.
Line up the paths with pink and white blooms like here and create matching arrangements using the same flowers but in pots.
A flower bed with yellow blooms shows off an edge of pink flowers and they create a bold and lovely combo.
Make Sure To Consider Mature Size
A common mistake is not thinking about how big a plant will get when it grows up. This is especially important for edging plants. For example, lavender might look small in a nursery pot, but it can grow up to 24 inches wide in a few years.
These bright pink flowers enliven the stone fence and make the landscape brighter and cooler at the same time.
Pink Phlox is a perfect plant for creating edges and to use it as a groundcover, too, it looks delicate, romantic and cute.
Bold red and pink and some white blooms will turn a simple stone path into a fab garden feature with lovely styling.
Bright red blooms lining up the walkway to the entrance will make the front yard bolder, cooler and brighter.
Two different types of Hosta plant lining up the fence and the pathway at the same time make the front yard more stylish and modern.
If you have a lot of greenery in the front yard, topiaries, fences and lawn, refresh the space with a bit of blooming edging, and you will get a cohesive and modern space.
This front yard is pure elegance with its tall living fence, some hedges, stone walkways and white blooming edging.
A flower bed with hydrangeas is framed with a hedge and some white flowers for a cuter and fresher look.
A creatively arranged curving flower bed features various plants and foliage, some pink blooms and white flowers for the edge and some trees.
A sophisticated garden with hedges, a living fence, some topiaries, white hydrangeas and white bloming edging for flawless style.
A beautiful garden with a green lawn, bold fuchsia blooms, grasses and some Laurentia fluviatilis groundcovers for the edge.
Infuse your garden with color rocking not only tall and bright blooms but also adding a bold flourishing edge of yellow and fuchsia flowers like here.
Design Tips For Beautiful Garden Borders
Creating a beautiful and functional garden border involves more than just selecting the right plants. Here are some essential design tips to help you make the most of your edging plants.
- Use color blocking. Large blocks of a single color can create a striking visual impact.
- Plan for seasonal colors. Ensure that there are always plants in bloom throughout the seasons. Spring bulbs like tulips and daffodils can be followed by summer bloomers such as daylilies and mums, and finally, autumn colors from plants like asters and sedums.
- Layer your plants. Taller plants like lavender and coneflowers should be placed at the back, medium-height plants such as daylilies in the middle, and shorter plants like thyme and mazus at the front. This creates depth.
- Combine plants with different textures to add interest. For example, pairing the smooth leaves of hostas with the feathery foliage of astilbes can create a pleasing contrast.
- Use plants with distinct forms to create focal points.