It is difficult to imagine any suburban area around a small country house or capital building for permanent residence without places specially equipped for planting flowers or other ornamental plants. However, no matter how bright and beautiful the plant composition may be, only a competently planned and properly arranged border for a flowerbed will give it a complete aesthetic appearance. Moreover, the owner does not have to spend significant money on the purchase of ready-made fences. They can be successfully equipped independently from improvised materials.
Appointment of flowerbed fences
The border for a flower bed performs simultaneously two main functions:
- Decorative. It makes the flower garden more attractive. Divides the entire infield into separate zones, which allows you to give the landscape a unique design look.
- Technological. The fence, built around ornamental plants, prevents leaching of fertile soil (with fertilizers added to it) by atmospheric precipitation, and also protects against weeds.
From what to build a border for a flower bed with your own hands
If building a house on your own plot can be safely described as a vital technical process, arranging flower beds and flower beds is already a creative task. Therefore, you should not rush into this business. And before you rush to the construction market and buy ready-made fences, you need to carefully look around and decide what of the materials that are quite suitable for the manufacture of fencing left after the construction of the house.
Using your own imagination and worldly ingenuity, as well as our recommendations for arranging borders, you can successfully use bricks, boards, logs, car tires, plastic bottles, willow branches, stones, pipes, profiled sheet metal and much more.
Box of boards
The easiest way to make borders for flower beds with your own hands from improvised boards. It is this kind of building material that, as a rule, remains in sufficient quantity after the end of the construction of the house. Also, disassembled scaffolding, already unnecessary wooden elements of the basement formwork and the remains of the bars (or boards) after the completion of the installation of the rafter system and the roof will go into the course.
Technologically, the simplest design for manufacturing is a box (of course, without bottom) from boards:
- Along the perimeter of a future flower bed we drive in pegs from a wooden beam.
- We file the necessary number of boards of the required length.
- We fasten them to the pegs with the help of screws.
- We paint the external surfaces so that the equipped flower garden is in harmony with the general style of the house and the plot.
- We fill the internal volume of the box with fertile soil, make the necessary fertilizers and plant flowers.
Important! To ensure a long service life (after all, we build a flower garden for more than one season), all wooden elements must be carefully treated with a special antiseptic solution before final installation. The advantage of such a flowerbed is that it can be raised above the level of the site to any height. A do-it-yourself border for a flowerbed, the photo of which you can see above, has a completely aesthetic and somewhat brutal appearance.
Fence from the boards
To protect the place of planting flowers, you can build a low fence of boards:
- We cut the boards into pieces of the same length, equal to the height of the future flowerbed, plus 15-20 cm for deepening into the ground.
- We dig a shallow trench around the flowerbed.
- We install chopped pieces of boards in the trench either close to each other, or in a checkerboard pattern with a slight overlap.
- We fill the free volume of the trench with earth and carefully ram it.
Advantages of such garden borders for flower beds:
- Almost any owner will find material for manufacturing, since any trim of boards of various thickness and width can be used.
- Appearance depends only on personal preferences. You can add asymmetry to the structure and use individual pieces of different heights or, for example, sharpen the upper edges of the boards.
Fencing made of logs
After developing your own site, do not rush to let all the fallen trees, one way or another interfering with the construction, for firewood. They can be quite useful when arranging borders for flower beds from improvised materials. Enough for this:
- Saw logs according to the size of the flower garden.
- Remove sod from soil surface.
- Lay the logs on the ground, forming from them a fence of the future flowerbed.
- On the outside of the perimeter, sprinkle them with earth (or even better with rubble or gravel).
- To fill in fertile soil and plant flowers.
The border of the flowerbed in the photo above looks very original. And although many may question its longevity, natural wood unprocessed by any chemical compounds is the most environmentally friendly building material.
Made of bricks
Having built a strong, reliable and durable brick house, the remains (and they, of course, will be, since it is quite difficult to calculate the exact amount needed perfectly) can be successfully used to erect fences of flower beds. We build low curbs quickly and simply using the dry masonry method:
- We dig a groove, the depth of which is approximately 1/2 of the length of the brick, and the width slightly exceeds its thickness.
- Pour sand into it at 1/3 of the depth.
- We install bricks vertically in the trench.
- Tapping with a rubber mallet, align the upper edge of the fence.
- The free volume of the groove is filled with earth and rammed it tightly.
On a note! The border will look much prettier if you install bricks at an angle. Then visually it will look like a very original serrated fence.
Made of natural stone
The fence of a flower bed made of natural stone, no doubt, will decorate any site, regardless of the style of the structure erected on it. Such natural material usually remains unclaimed after the construction of deep trenches during the construction of foundations or drainage ditches. We make up for the deficiency by conducting certain “exploratory” work in nearby forests, fields, or on the banks of rivers and lakes.
Carefully put boulders, cobblestones, slate, buta or tuff slabs around the flowerbed, which we fasten together with cement mortar or special building adhesives for the strength of the fence. The advantages of such a border are its unique appearance and the absence of the need for subsequent maintenance for many years.
From calibrated logs
Calibrated logs are very popular today in individual suburban construction. So that the place of planting of ornamental plants most harmoniously fits into the overall composition of the site, and also looks well combined with the main structure, its fence can be made of this natural material.
There are at least two variants of execution:
- “Wasteful” (i.e. uneconomical), but very fast. We build a low log house (only 2-3 logs) around the future flowerbed and fill it with soil.
- Economical (in terms of consumption of building material), but more labor-intensive and quite long. We saw each log along two halves with a circular saw. From the obtained blanks we put together shields and install them around the place of planting flowers.
Branch woven border
A beautiful decorative border for flower beds in the classic "rural" style can be made of willow twigs by the weaving method. Of course, such a method of making fences can be recommended only to those lucky ones whose personal plot is located near a river or other natural reservoir. Indeed, there willows grow in large numbers. Naturally, you can’t go and just chop the required number of branches. Nature must be protected! However, if you do not miss the moment when the foresters clear the approaches and entrances to the pond from rapidly growing plants, then you can easily stock up with the necessary amount of material for the wicker fence.
Procedure:
- We clean the willow twigs from the bark.
- Along the perimeter of the flower bed at the same distance we drive in pre-prepared wooden pegs.
- Starting from the corner, we skip the rods between the pegs according to the principle of weaving the basket - then from the inside, then from the outside.
- Having laid in this way 3-4 rows, we tap them with a mallet in order to get a dense and durable fence.
- We repeat this process several times until we lay the rods to the planned height of the future flowerbed.
- For reliability, from the outside, the rods can be additionally fixed to the pegs using thin nails.
And although it takes a lot of time to prepare material and make a wicker fence, as a result you will get an original and original flowerbed with a strong and durable border.
Made of plastic
Have you arranged and safely started growing various vegetables in a greenhouse or greenhouse made of plastic? Do not rush to throw out the remains of this material useful in the household. From it you can quickly and easily build plastic borders for flower beds:
- We cut strips of the same width. The size depends on how high the railing you need.
- From a wooden block (for example, 50 X 50 mm) we harvest a certain number of pegs pointed with an ax.
- On the perimeter of the flower bed, we dig a narrow furrow.
- We lay out the cut strips of plastic along the trench with an overlap (so that they go one on top of another 5-6 cm).
- At the joints of individual sheets, as well as at the corners of the flower bed, we drive into the ground wooden pegs previously treated with a special antiseptic.
- We install the strips in an upright position and fasten them to the pegs using self-tapping screws.
- We fill the trench with earth and carefully ram it.
- We fill the internal volume of the equipped flowerbed with fertile soil.
- We plant decorative plants or flowers.
Advantages of borders for plastic flower beds are:
- Durability, as it is not susceptible to decay or corrosion.
- Absolute environmental safety, because modern polymeric materials are used for greenhouses and greenhouses, which do not emit harmful substances even with strong heating from direct sunlight.
- Simplicity and high speed of construction of the fence.
On a note! If you make a small bed of gravel, pebbles, gravel, or marble chips from the outside of the flower bed, this will give the flower garden a more attractive appearance.
From plastic bottles
Quite original and, most importantly, a durable border for a flower bed with your own hands can be made from empty plastic bottles. Naturally, buying them on purpose does not make any sense. But after a sufficient amount of empty plastic containers has accumulated in the barn, you can think about its rational use.
To make the fence aesthetic and attractive, it is advisable to use bottles of the same size. But the color of the plastic does not matter: firstly, the finished border can be painted, and secondly, multi-colored bottles can be arranged in a strictly defined order (you get a picture).
Getting to the arrangement:
- On the perimeter of the flower bed, we dig a shallow trench with a width slightly exceeding the diameter of the bottle.
- We fill all empty containers with sand, gravel or ordinary earth. This will give additional strength to the future fence.
- For the convenience of work (especially if they have to be carried out alone), a small layer of loose earth or sand is poured into the bottom of the trench.
- We stick 4-5 bottles into the loose soil as densely as possible upside down to each other.
- We fill the free space with earth and lightly tamp.
- Similarly, we fix a few more bottles in the trench until we complete their installation around the entire perimeter of the flower bed.
- Pour the earth on both sides of the hedge and ram it.
Now you can begin to fill the internal volume with fertile soil and planting flowers or other ornamental crops.
We do not recommend using empty glass bottles for arranging the curb. It is enough to simply break them with an iron garden tool.
From car tires
Such accessible material as a tire that has worked out its life has long been used in the manufacture of borders for small flower beds. Everything is very simple:
- We put the tire in the right place.
- With a bayonet spade, we mark the soil by sticking it next to the contour of the wheel.
- We remove it to the side and on the applied marking we remove the sod.
- We put the tire in the equipped recess.
- We fill the inside with fertile soil.
- We plant your favorite flowers.
If desired, the surface of the mini-flower beds can be painted. For example, make it green or bright, well shading the colors of the planted flowers.
Important! On bright summer days, car tires heat up when exposed to direct sunlight, which can lead to the release of toxic substances. Such devices are best used for plants that do not require a lot of light, and place them in shady areas.
Finally
Of course, in our article only some options for arranging borders for the flowerbed, made by hand, are presented. However, even from the above material it is clear that in order to effectively decorate the landscape of your personal plot, it is not necessary to invite a professional designer. Having spent a certain amount of time and effort, it is possible to build fences for planting flowers and ornamental plants on your own, with minimal cash costs. For example, from a profiled metal sheet remaining after the construction of the fence, paving slabs (or rather its excess), roof tiles and so on.