Ideas for Designs With Landscape Timber for Edging
- Landscape timbers may be used in repetitive designs, or designs that use similar elements repeatedly to create patterns and rhythm. Stack timbers in varying heights to create low, mid-size and tall bed edges. Use them as retaining walls or create geometrically shaped beds in different sizes throughout the landscape. Within beds, use the same colors of plants to complete the repetition. For example, plant sulpher heart colchis ivy (Hedera colchica), a ground cover with variegated yellow-green foliage, with yellow-blooming perennials, such as basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis) and the yellow-twig dogwood (Cornus sericea “Lutea”), a deciduous shrub that blooms with yellow flowers and displays bright-yellow stems through the winter.
- Landscape timbers work well in dominance or emphasis designs, which draw attention to a focal point. Timber edging can be laid horizontally and vertically so as to draw the eye to an especially striking plant in an empty space or a single, brightly colored plant that stands out in a sea of green foliage. Specimen plant ideas include the goldenchain tree (Laburnum anagyroides), a narrow, upright tree that reaches heights ranging from 12 to 30 feet and produces long, hanging, yellow flower racemes. Japanese maples come in a range of colors, from purple to red-orange, and have brilliant fall foliage.
- Interconnected designs use physical linkage between objects to create unity. Landscape timbers lend themselves well to this type of design, as edging may be used to link pathways, driveways and structure lines to bed edges. Plants that mimic these spreading, touching forms work with the timbers to create an interconnected design. Choices include ground covers or low-growing perennial species that spread much wider than they grow tall, such as the Siberian cypress (Microbiota decussata), a foot-tall evergreen that spreads to 12 feet wide and has arching branches. Evergreen candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) grows to 4 feet wide but only 12 inches tall. It blooms with clusters of white spring flowers and has dark, lustrous foliage.
- Symmetrical designs bisect the landscape on a central axis and create balance by planting the same species on each side. Use landscape timbers to form the edges of planting beds or raised beds that run through the center of the landscape and plant the same specimen plants or groupings of species on either side. The goal is to form a mirror image and achieve a balanced appearance. For a formal look with minimal maintenance, plant slow-growing evergreen species such as Blue Heaven junipers (Juniperus scopulorum) in timber-edged beds. These blue-green shrubs grow to 20 feet tall in a narrow, pyramidal or conical form that requires very little pruning. Other species for formal designs include yews (Taxus spp.) and Carissa hollies (Ilex cornuta).
