If you’re gardening on a budget and need an idea for a thrifty bed border that isn’t plastic, save your TP and paper towel rolls. (Don’t use the bleached type if you can help it.)
Dig a shallow trench around the bed, and bury them half way down (cut paper towel rolls into smaller pieces). Push back the soil once you have them in place.
You can also plant companion annual flower or herb seeds (like nasturtiums, marigolds, chives, etc.) inside the rolls if you wish instead of smushing them flatter like I did in the image above the first year we used them. If you do that, put some of the removed soil inside each roll to get the surface up around 1/2-1/4″ of the top edge so the companion seeds get adequate light.
They will degrade (and help enrich your soil), but they will help keep grass and other low growers from migrating into your beds for the season. You can also pull the remnants of them out at the end of the growing year, and add them to your compost if you need more brown in your mix to balance out your harvest leftover greens.
These are also handy if you’re either starting small and/or not sure if where you want to make a bed will work out or not, because when you later want to expand or move the bed, then you won’t have to fuss with removing and replacing long strips of edging and their respective pins, nor hauling around wood/brick/stone edging.
