EDGING AND CULTIVATING YOUR FLOWER BEDS

There's nothing that will give your beds a more polished, neat, professional look than maintaining the edges and cultivating the soil.  A technique  called "SHADOW EDGING" will enhance your beds by emphasizing and enhancing the blooms.  It leads the eye around and through each bed or area.  To SHADOW EDGE, I take a hand shovel, and, with the edge of the shovel, run it next to the edge of the lawn, curb, or metal edge that you have.  This moves about 2 inches of soil up in towards the flower bed.  It makes your edges clean, and gives that professional look to the bed, much like a lawn that has been edged instead of letting the grass spill over onto the sidewalk.  Shadow edging also keeps the soil from washing out onto your curbing, or grassy areas.  The next thing that gives your beds a real "manicured" look is cultivating the soil.  After I have dead-headed and done any weeding in the bed, I go back with a narrow cultivator, or, my favorite tool to use for this, a weed digger, to "FLUFF UP" the soil.  I just lightly lift the soil, lightly raking back and forth, removing any footprints, animals prints, or areas that look pressed down--compacted soil just isn't attractive--and by fluffing the soil, it gives the bed a professional, very polished, rich soil-type look.  These two techniques make all the difference between a good bed and a manicured, professional-looking bed!  If I was asked what was the quickest, easiest way to get the gardens ready for visitors, these two techniques do more for a polished look to the bed than anything else I can do.