Adding edging to your landscape creates a crisp, finished look and serves a more functional purpose: Traditional landscape edging materials, such as brick, stone, or steel, prevent plants from overtaking your lawn while keeping the grass out of your beds. But as slightly overgrown looks, like the cottage garden style, have gained widespread acceptance, you may think this streamlined aesthetic is too harsh for a garden.
Enter edging plants for landscaping borders. Position these alongside edging materials to soften the look, or use lower-growing plants on their own to outline different areas of your garden. As the frontline of your flowerbeds, edging plants should look good no matter the season or the growing conditions, unfurling new flowers and foliage from spring to fall. Bonus points go to colorful border plants that also enhance the winter landscape.
How to Use Edging Plants
The best edging plants for your landscape catch your eye and lead it forward—for example, calling attention to a garden path to help direct foot traffic. Placing colorful edging plants around a flower bed also adds visual excitement while clearly defining the planting space from other nearby features. Consider a uniform look to maintain a more orderly aesthetic: Using just one type of edging plant—for example, one of many evergreen edging plants, like blue star juniper or creeping juniper—provides a consistent frame for the seasonally changing inner parts of the garden.
Evaluate Your Light Level
Before you pick your edging plants, assess the amount of sunlight your space gets. Full-sun plants will perform best if the sun shines directly for eight or more hours a day. But if the bed is shaded enough to get less than eight hours of direct sunlight a day, choose plants that prefer growing in part shade. Refer to our lists below to find the best picks for your landscape.
Edging Plants for Sun
Boxwood
One of the most elegant evergreen edging plants is boxwood. Choose dwarf varieties such as 'Morris Midget' and 'Wee Willie' to create a tidy hedge along the borders of your garden beds. Shear your boxwood annually to maintain its shape and size. Boxwood varieties vary in hardiness but generally will grow in Zones 4-8.
Daylily
Graceful mounds of green foliage make daylily a solid landscaping edging plant for spring through fall. The plant sends up colorful flower spikes in midsummer; keep plants tidy by trimming away flower stalks after blooms fade. Choose from varieties in shades of yellow, orange, red, and pink. Most are hardy in Zones 3-10.
Lady's Mantle
This beautiful perennial produces tidy mounds of scallop-shape green leaves. The fine hairs on the foliage catch water and dewdrops, often adding a little extra sparkle. Lady's mantle blooms in early summer with clusters of tiny, chartreuse flowers. This low-growing plant makes for an elegant edging plant in Zones 4-7.
Lavender
Thriving in bright sun, heat, and drought, lavender makes a hardy and fragrant edging plant. This herb is hardy in Zones 5-10 and evergreen in warmer areas. Harvest the purple, blue, or white flowers for bouquets or drying.
Moss Rose
Dry conditions and hot sun don't faze long-blooming moss rose. An annual with jewel-tone flowers, this beauty expands rapidly to create a colorful mat of flowers and foliage. Growing just 6 inches tall, it's perfect for edging beds of low-growing plants.
Sedum
Clumping, upright sedum varieties such as 'Matrona' add fall flair to the landscape and create a neat edge for taller plants behind them. This perennial holds up well to heat and drought. Most sedum varieties are hardy in Zones 3-10, and the flowers attract pollinators.
Thrift
This pretty perennial produces tidy mounds of grassy foliage. Rounded clusters of bright pink or white flowers bloom from late spring to early summer. Thrift loves full sun and very well-drained soil in Zones 3-9.
Thyme
Fragrant and flavorful, thyme creeps to form a mound of foliage decorated with pink or white flowers in summer. Low-growing thyme is an ideal edging plant in front of low-growing perennials or in an herb garden in Zones 4-9.
Zinnia
An annual that's easy to start from seed, zinnias are available in many colors and sizes. Shorter, dwarf varieties or seed mixes such as 'Thumbelina' or 'Short Stuff' make colorful edging plants.
Edging Plants for Shade
Astilbe
Feathery flower plumes and fernlike foliage make astilbe a stunning addition to any shade garden in Zones 3-8. This drought-tolerant perennial's tidy shape makes it a good choice for landscape edging. Flower colors include white, pink, and red.
Epimedium
A favorite edging plant for shady landscape beds, epimedium (barrenwort) is a perky little perennial that blooms in spring with spidery flowers in shades of pink, purple, orange, yellow, and white. Many varieties have attractive foliage that turns bronzy in autumn. This tough plant also is drought-tolerant and hardy in Zones 5-9.
Begonia
An annual with lots of flower power, begonias grow best in well-drained, rich soil and warm weather. Many varieties stand less than 12 inches tall, making them well-suited as an edging plant.
Coleus
This annual's colorful foliage will wake up a sleepy shade garden. Many coleus cultivars and color combinations are available. (Some also will grow in the sun.) Pinch these fast-growing plants back to maintain the best height for edging your garden bed.
Ferns
Thriving in moist soil and part shade to deep shade in Zones 3-9, many ferns make easy-care edging plants. Choose low-growing types for the front of a garden bed. Be aware that some ferns spread quickly—if they begin encroaching on nearby plants, you can divide them.
Hellebore
Leathery evergreen foliage and late-winter or early-spring flowers are the hallmarks of hellebores. Plenty of varieties offer beautiful blooms in white, cream, pink, rose, bicolors, and even nearly black. Hint: Plant several of the same variety for consistent edging plants. Hellebore is hardy in Zones 4-9.
Coralbells
Gorgeous foliage in shades of green, yellow, and burgundy, topped by delicate flower spikes in summer, make coralbells a high-impact edging plant. This tough perennial grows in dry conditions and a variety of soils in Zones 4-9.
Hosta
Low-growing hostas such as 'Blue Mouse Ears' and 'Chartreuse Wiggles' make excellent edging plants for a shady garden bed. Hardy in Zones 3-9, hostas feature leaves ranging in color from chartreuse to bluish. Varieties with variegated leaves will add extra brightness to the garden, while solid-hued foliage will create a sense of calm.
Japanese Forestgrass
One of the few grasses that thrives in shade, Japanese forestgrass forms compact mounds of gracefully arching foliage. Also called Hakone grass, this perennial makes a tough, drought-tolerant plant for landscaping edging in Zones 5-9.
Liriope
A classic edging plant in warmer regions, liriope (lilyturf) is a tough but showy perennial. Wands of small, purple flowers punctuate the grasslike, evergreen foliage during the summer in Zones 4-10. Look for variegated varieties for an extra splash of color.
Make Sure to Consider Mature Size
Underestimating the mature size of a new landscaping addition is a frequent mistake when selecting all types of plants, but it's especially problematic when it comes to edging plants. Take lavender: In a 4-inch nursery pot at the garden center, it's hard to imagine lavender could expand to 24 inches wide in a couple of years. Bottom line: Carefully read nursery tags and space your plantings according to their mature size, not the size they are when you purchase them.
