Working the curb appeal

To kick off the 2012 Staycation, Mark and I took advantage of his Mondays off of work to install concrete edgers along the wooded/planted area of our backyard.   We had installed plastic hammer-in edging around 2 years ago but it just didn't hold up well and soil erosion covered it over in places so we felt that we needed something sturdier and taller.

We started by marking off where we wanted the edge to go and digging a trench around 4" deep.  Thanks to our awesome rocky soil, there was a lot of rock removal and cutting through tree roots.

We dug out the trench on Sunday during Lily's nap, finishing right before it rained.   The rest waited for Monday after the kiddo was dropped off at daycare.  

We chose a 12" long "Tuscan" style edger from Home Depot.  They had a similar style at Lowes but were 18" and we thought the shorter block would make it easier to work around the curve.   We bought 60 edgers because we thought we needed that many (I paced out the distance).   We also got 5 bags of paver sand based on the guidelines in the chart on the bag of sand.   It was good that we went to Home Depot (much closer to home) because my little crossover was almost bottomed out on the shocks from the weight of around 800 pounds of concrete and sand.  

After digging the trench we put 1" of paver sand into the bottom and compacted and leveled it using a length of 2x4.  

Then we started setting the edgers into the sand.  It was a really quick process to fill the trench and set the pavers.

Bella provided moral support.

Then we backfilled with the dirt we dug out of the trench as well as some topsoil that we picked up at Agway.   Mark fertilized and seeded and we set the sprinkler to run for 20 minutes twice a day.

They turned out great!    We have edgers left over to take to the back of the yard at a later date (we have a bunch of brush back there from when a tree came down in the yard during last year's freak October snowstorm.