How to Make a Landscape Edging for Mulching or Putting Mulch Around Trees, Bushes, Flowers, Scrubs, or Any Kind of Plants

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Mulch
Flat shovel
Round shovel
Small hand Shovel
Mulch
Rake
Landscape fabric and Scissors (Optional)
Pitch Fork (Optional for picking up mulch)

Step 1

My small evergreen

Assess the situation. Are the tree roots very shallow? How far out from the tree do they go? In this case the tree roots were deep, except for a few, and they did not go too far out from the tree.
Step 2

The rough measurement

Determine how big a circle around the tree you want. I decided to make it about 1 1/2 feet because the lowest limbs were above my head and I didn’t want to give up too much grass. I used the top length of the shovel as the measurement around the tree.
Step 3

Dig in!

Use the round shovel to cut the outer dimension of the mulch circle. Go all around the tree and make sure to push the shovel in at least 4 inches. If you hit any small roots, you may have to cut them or you can just go around them. If you want a more accurate circle, then measure and mark it.
Step 4

Skim the grass

Use the flat shovel to skim the grass out. Cut very shallow so you don’t take out too much dirt or damage too many surface roots.
Step 5

The perfect circle, almost.

Once you are done removing the grass, eyeball or double check your measurements and make any further adjustments at this point.
Step 6

Dig the edge

Dig a trench in the outer part of the circle. It should be about 4 inches deep and 2 inches wide (or the wide of your shoe). This is the edge. The trench must be straight down on the grass side. Throw all the excess soil to the area where you just skimmed off the grass.
Step 7

The outer edge in complete

Use your small shovel to remove any loose dirt and make it a nice clean circle.
Step 8

Make the slope

Take your flat shovel and round out the inner edge of the trench. In other words, the outer edge of the trench must be straight down, but the inner edge must slope into the trench so the mulch gradually will fall into the trench. You do not want the inner edge straight down.
Step 9

Another way to make the slope

You can use your flat shovel to go from the bottom of the trench up toward the tree to make the slope.
Step 10

Flatten it out

Gently flatten out the lose soil at the base of the tree. Also flatten out the slope. Make sure there is no lose dirt. Use your foot to flatten out the bottom of the trench as well.
Step 11

The final product before the mulch

The final edge should look like this. If you look closely, you can see that I left some of the surface roots intact as they go through the edge. Even though this is a small tree, it’s been there for more than 15 years so I didn’t want to damage it too much.
Step 12

Landscape fabric

As an optional step, cover the dirt with landscape fabric. Do not use plastic. The purpose of the landscape fabric is to keep the mulch and the soil separate. Eventually the mulch will turn to dirt and the mound under your tree will get bigger and bigger. If you have landscape fabric, you can easily scoop out the “mulch turn soil” and use it for something else. Most landscapers do not use landscape fabric.
Step 13

Don't cover the straight edge

Cut the landscape fabric along the edges so that it falls into the trench but does not come up the outer side. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Step 14

A wheel barrel full of homemade mulch

Fill up your wheel barrel with mulch.
Step 15

Dump it in.

Dump the mulch in. Since this is the first time, I am making the mulch 2 or more inches thick.
Step 16

Pack it in the trench

Flatten the mulch in the trench with your foot or a rake. Add more mulch to the trench as needed to fill it up to the edge. Do not go over the edge. Pile the mulch up toward the tree and make it look the way you want it to look. The easiest way to spread the mulch is by hand or with the back of a rake.
Step 17

The final product will look like the picture at the top of this article and you won’t have to worry about dinging the bark of the tree with your lawn mower anymore. I made this look like a cone. You can also make it look like an upside down plate, where it is flat from the tree out and then drops into the trench.