ColMuldrow, I think you have had a lot of suggestions here for things to do IN the beds and you were looking for things to OUTLINE the beds. No one has really addressed the virtue of your idea of outlining the beds, and I think the message in that is that outlining them may or may not be a good design decision. Could you maybe tell us what is driving your desire to outline them? That would assist in a design discussion... this being a landscape design forum. And in design, purpose often drives decision-making. For me there is some confusion, as I may have suggested in my post, between the image of what you have, and what you want to achieve. What you have is kind of hard to argue with, and because of its dominant nature, trying to put a different kind of landscaping underneath it would have a bit of a futile feel to it. And so, a tidily outlined bed would have a slightly surreal feeling to me in this setting. It is obviously your yard and your preferences will prevail, but given that you've chosen a landscape design forum rather than either a plant forum or a local nursery for advice, I'm afraid that does drive the kind of advice you'll get (unless the conversation turns to ivy...). That said, there are not many plants that will stay exactly where you want them to in the conditions you have here; at least, it may depend on the trees, but I don't think so. Plants travel in response to where they find moisture and light and nutrients. Areas under trees are notoriously short of these attributes, and you may find a carefully planted edge wandering from where you laid it. That is why I suggested a physical edge, which if nothing else would create moisture-retaining areas in the soil that would keep plants inclined to stay where you put them, and allow you to correct if they wander. Yardvaark, I thought we were all going to try to get along. The key to doing that is, I think, in your last remark where you characterize opposing advice as an attack. It is not, and regarding it as such will always lead where this thread has led. Opposing advice, even if it criticizes advice previously given, is just the way the cookie crumbles when you ask a room full of people who are not an organization or hierarchy of any kind for advice. You will not get a single answer, the answers may disagree, and as the asker, you simply have to sort that out and the people in the room have to come to terms with being disagreed with. You could have opposed my advice to use ferns on some basis, and I would not have regarded that as at attack on me, but rather as contextualizing the advice I gave the OP. I might have responded, or reiterated, but probably not if I thought your additional advice enhanced the OP's ability to evaluate the option. I don't regard it as an attack on me when someone denigrates my ingrained aversion to foundation planting; I simply see it as a good thing that the OP gets a variety of advice. If all else fails, we should all be addressing the OP, and not each other. Karin L

I do trenching of my flower beds but only appx. 4" (never really measured)so I don't turn an ankle accidently and find it attractive, neat looking and easier to maintain that nice edge. However, you'll still have grass from the lawn grow OVER the trench that has to be trimmed. Which brings me to this question which I had posted in the "Tips and Techniques" forum but got no feedback yet: Any comments on these grass shears, to be used as edge shears for flower beds in lawn areas? My beds are trenched and I've always looked for a tool to clip the grass that grows across the trench. Check this tool out at the link below, scroll down to "Vertical Blade Lawn Shears 39" (P75)" and tell me if it's worth $66. Currently, I'm using some vertical hand held grass shears I bought at Lowes the other day for $9.99. Just thought the long handles would be a plus. Bacho is suppose to be a great brand,too. No, I'm not spamming, honest! http://www.bahcostore.com/grass-shears.jsp hpny2 - you will also have to still dig the trench periodically as the dirt tries to reclaim it's space so to speak. As rdaystrom says, "maintain" is the key word.

Have you had a greater amount of rain lately or is this a low level in your yard so it is always wet? Ideally the soil will not touch the bottoms of the fence boards as it will cause them to rot. So I'd recommend making the flower bed wider and sloping the soil up from the fence ensuring soil is not touching the boards. You could mound the bed up from the fence then back down to the lawn level. Two feet width is narrow for a flower/vegetable bed and yours looks to be less than that. I would mix the native clay soil with the purchased garden soil. Clay soil can have nutrients that the purchased soil may not have and will also help with moisture retention. If you mix a few inches of the clay soil with the new soil it should give you a deep enough bed for most plants. Any grass you dig out can be composted in a corner of your yard. You can pile it up with the chunks upside down and it will rot and become good soil.

I saw some one mention needing a sharp shovel. Yes, get a file (just a simple hand file for sharpening metal blades will do, less than $10 at a big box hardware store.) and sharpen all your garden tools, especially shovels and hoes. If they are high quality metal, it might be slow going but the edge will last longer. If it is really quick and easy to sharpen, the metal is soft and you will need to sharpen often. Tools don't come from the store properly sharpened and most places won't sharpen them for you. I like the new bed. I've been known to use the yard trimmings on top of the cardboard to help hold it down until I get a good thick layer of mulch over it. I've also used this method to make veggie garden beds. We lay out the cardboard and put down a really thin layer of chip mulch to keep the cardboard from blowing away and then get a load of mushroom compost piled on thick and plant in that. So far this has worked well for me for everything but corn. Great pictures, showed the process very well! Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx