Garden edging: which edge for lawn, gravel and a sandpit

Garden edging is the strip that holds a surface in place: the sand under your terrace, the gravel in your path and the grass outside your border. Under tiles and clay pavers you use a concrete edging kerb, around gravel and borders a steel strip. A one-metre concrete kerb costs €4.49 at a Dutch DIY store.

Without an edge, the gravel ends up in the lawn after one winter, and the pavers on the outside of the terrace sink. Which edge you need depends on two things: what lies inside it and what lies against it.

Which edging goes with which surface?

A terrace or path on a sand bed gets a concrete edging kerb (opsluitband in a Dutch shop). Gravel and borders get a thin strip of steel, corten steel or plastic. Along a wall, a fence with a concrete base panel or a pond, you need no edge at all.

The kerb under a terrace holds the sand under the stones in place. If the sand stays put, the stones stay level. A driveway needs a thicker kerb.

For a light terrace, a galvanised steel strip is a good alternative. Concrete weathers over the years: it gets coarser and the colour fades. You set a steel strip along the edge after the paving is laid, so there is less digging.

Gravel is loose, so the edge mainly has to stop the stones from spreading. A thin strip of steel or plastic is enough there. Plastic bends most easily into a curve. Steel stays straighter in a straight line.

Seven types of edging, with sizes and price per metre

There are seven common types: steel, corten steel, concrete, bricks on edge, timber, plastic and natural stone. Aluminium is a variant of the steel strip. The prices below are Dutch shop prices on 3 October 2026, converted to one metre. Posts, pins and sand come on top.

Steel edging is a thin plate. A galvanised strip does not rust, because a layer of zinc covers it. Corten steel arrives unrusted and takes about 4 to 5 months to grow its orange-brown layer of rust. While that happens, rusty water can run off the strip.

Bricks on edge, a soldier course, stand firmer with a row laid flat in front of them. That flat row sits level with the grass. One mower wheel runs along it, and a wide strip like this also lets a robot mower cut right up to the edge.

A flat row of bricks beside the grass is a mowing strip. The corten steel strip behind it keeps the soil of the border in place.

How high should garden edging be?

High enough that most of it sits in the ground. Of a concrete kerb 15 cm high, 10 to 12 cm goes into the ground. Its top sits about 1 cm below the paving, so you barely see it.

A steel border edge shows even less. A linking strip 17.5 cm high, pins included, leaves about 4 cm in view. A low strip 6 cm high is 16 cm long with its pins.

You need a taller edge where the ground is higher on one side. Think of a raised planting bed or a small step between terrace and lawn. There the edge also has to retain the soil. Steel strips come up to 39 cm high. A hardwood board 20 cm high is made to retain small differences in level.

For a driveway the thickness matters most. A kerb 5 to 6 cm thick is enough for a footpath. A driveway needs one 8 to 10 cm thick, because the car pushes the stones outwards on every turn.

How long does garden edging last?

That depends on the material and on where it sits. Timber and steel in wet ground last less long than above it. This table gives what the sources say for each type, including where they give no figure.

The years for timber come from the stake test that Centrum Hout, the Dutch timber information centre, uses to sort wood into durability classes. Pressure-treated pine falls in class 3. For an edge you do not want to replace in ten years, choose hardwood.

For corten steel, the lifespan depends most on where it sits. Above ground it gets wet and dry in turn, and that builds the protective rust layer. In the ground that does not happen. Straightcurve, a maker of steel edging, measures 0.1 to 0.3 mm of rust a year just at the soil line, in moderately aggressive Australian soil. A 1.6 mm strip can rust through there in 5 to 15 years under harsh conditions. A strip of 2 or 3 mm lasts proportionally longer. On the coast, makers advise against corten steel within 2 km of the sea.

Zinc rusts in open air about thirty times more slowly than steel, according to the same guide. Salt, acid and lasting damp do attack the zinc layer. For concrete we found no figure, for plastic only one report from practice.

How long does edging last next to lawn, gravel, paving or concrete?

What lies against the edge matters at least as much as the edge itself. Next to gravel, steel lasts longer than in a border with compost, which holds damp against the steel. In border soil, steel rusts and timber rots at the soil line. Along a lawn, mower and frost wear the edge down; along paving, a sinking sand bed does.

Along a lawn, the top of the edge sits best about 1 cm above the ground. The mower then rolls over it without the blade hitting the edge. Fix a plastic edge with pins, or frost can push it up.

In a border, the weak point is the soil line, where damp and air meet. Fungi in timber and rust in steel need both. When the soil settles, the soil line moves down and rust starts in a new place, so top up sunken soil. A loose plastic sheet between steel and soil traps damp behind it. Bitumen paint on the buried part works, because it sticks to the steel.

Under tiles and pavers, the sand bed decides how long the edge does its job. Set the kerb before you lay the paving. Cutting back the sand bed afterwards makes subsidence much more likely. With high groundwater or a ride-on mower, choose a kerb 6 cm thick. Salt attacks the surface of concrete paving, but not clay pavers.

Against concrete, skip corten steel, because its rust run-off leaves stains.

A safe edge for a sandpit or play area

Choose an edge without a sharp top. A thin steel strip sticking up above the sand or the grass is an edge a child can land on with a knee or a hand. Use rubber or timber there.

Rubber sandpit edges are made for exactly this. They are rounded and give a little, and they are meant to replace sharp concrete or iron edges. A common size is 100 x 15 x 15 cm, and you cut them to length with a knife.

For a sandpit in a back garden we prefer a timber board with a rounded top. It matches a border and you can sit on it. Hardwood lasts longest. A plastic edge 1 cm thick is a second option.

When do you not need garden edging?

Along the wall of your house, a raised border or a fence with a concrete base panel. These already hold the base of your terrace in place. You only need an edge where paving meets something loose: grass, gravel or a border.

A pond gets no edging either. You finish the edge of the liner with large stones that overhang the water slightly, so the liner is out of sight.

A lawn without an edge works, but it costs effort. The grass grows into the border, so you cut the edge back regularly. And the mower drops into the border at the edge. If you do not want to do that every month, lay an edge or a flat row of stones.

Edging in your garden design

Which edge goes where is easiest to see on a plan of your own garden. In tuinontwerp.app you put your plot on screen to scale and draw your terrace, paths, gravel, lawn and borders on it. Each surface automatically gets an edge that suits it.

A terrace and a path get a concrete kerb, except a timber deck. Gravel and a planting bed you drew get steel. A lawn and a sandpit get no edge by default. The app draws no edge along a building, and where two surfaces meet there is one strip. In the Edging section you pick another type: none, steel, corten steel, concrete, brick, timber or plastic.

The app then counts the metres per type of edging, rounded up to whole metres, because you buy it by the metre. Designing on your own plot is free. More about the border behind that edge is in how to make a planting plan, and what a whole design costs is in what a garden design costs. Every post about materials is listed in the materials category.

Concrete under the terrace, steel around gravel and borders, rubber or timber at the sandpit, and nothing along the wall. Start at the address field at the bottom of this page and draw your own garden with its edges.