To give your landscape a polished look, a defined edge to the plant beds is very important. This makes the bed lines stand out nicely delineating the areas of lawn vs. plant beds. A permanent edge can be accomplished with aluminum edging or other materials.
Another option is to create an edge with a spade.
To cut the edge, I use a sharp shovel with a flat blade to make a crisp line outlining the bed. (Rounded shovels make this job a lot more difficult.) I push the spade straight down into the ground about 6″ deep at the edge of the bed. Then, starting about a spade-width of soil away from the first cut line, I cut at a 45 degree angle from the plant bed down toward the base of my first cut. I remove that excess soil so there is a trench around the entire plant bed. When I bark the bed, I fill that area with bark so no one will step in it and twist their ankle. If a heavy rain comes, this also helps to keep the bark from washing into the lawn or onto the sidewalk because the trench will first collect the excess water. This method is less expensive than using edging materials but it will need to be maintained once a year with a quick re-spading.
