Way to Design With Landscape Timbers Garden

Landscape timbers are a versatile and useful material for the home landscape. Used for retaining walls, sandboxes and raised flower beds, the rustic timbers are inexpensive and easy to use.

Landscape timbers

Landscape timbers are simple stripped logs of timber wood that are flattened on top and bottom .These timber logs require a simple installation process with some basic guidelines to be followed during their installation. Landscape timbers are used to build walls, lay walkways, fence the gardens and build little houses and huts. Their applications are diverse and only limited with your imagination and tool handling capability.

Landscape Timbers

Landscape timbersare a versatile and useful material for the home landscape. Used for retaining walls, sandboxes and raised flower beds, the countryside timbers are inexpensive and easy to use.

Uses of landscape timber

Landscape timbers are used to raise flowerbeds, to give your landscape a warm look or to make a readymade garden. Use some compost and topsoil; plant some carrots, taproot, radishes, parsnips and anything you can think of inside this garden and see it blooming with flowers and fruits.

You can use landscaping timbers in every method which you can imagine. There is wide range of timbers nowadays, and you can even purchase little logs with a flat base or manufacture it at your own. Even though they look natural, actually, they are made from plywood; hence they are a reused product. Nevertheless, people prefer to cut the actual timber instead of buying the landscaping timbers.

Real wood landscaping timber isn’t chemically handled, while ply board is. Consequently, real wooden timber can last only for seven or eight many years but they are less dangerous and healthier, especially if you will find children in your own home. Plywood fire logs are given more chemical substances to keep going longer. But they are not good for health owing to their chemical treatment.

Easy steps to install landscape timber

• Collect pressure treated timbers and other supplies

 Landscape edging is quick to install. Landscape timbers are round in shape on their four sides, making them visually appealing. Each timber is 8 feet long. Hence to cover the length of 32 feet, 4 such timber lengths are required.

Other supplies needed are:

• Hand edger
• Shovel
• Edging stakes
• String
• Mallet
• Garden hoe or steel rake
• Tape measure
• Level
• Square
• Saw
• Drill
• Galvanized corner braces
• Galvanized mending plates
• Gloves
• Safety goggles (to wear when sawing)

• Tie string between two corners to mark the length of the border planting

The first and foremost step is with the help of tape the border is measured to be of 32 feet long. Place a scrap piece of lumber at the end of the 32 feet length to mark the point in the yard.

Second step is to tie string along the length in the following manner:

• Tie one end of a ball of string around an edging stake
• Drive this edging stake into the ground, using a mallet, at one end of the border planting
• Walk towards the other end of the border planting, unfurling the string as you go
• When you get to the other end, cut the string and tie it to another edging stake
• Drive the latter into the ground
• If the string isn’t taut, wrap it a little tighter around one of the stake

Work on the depth of the border planting with 4 feet and 3 inches of two timbers to create an edge.

• Use a hand edger to remove sod

Create a mini trench along the length of the string with the help of the hand edger. With the mini-trench (created by the hand edger) in place, now it’s time for next step. Remove any sod that remains within the confines of the border planting, using a shovel.

• Rake the ground to make it level

 With the help of the garden hoe, rake the ground to make it level. In this process you will have to remove the stones, roots etc. from the ground. When you think you have the ground reasonably even, walk on it, right along the inner edge of the string, to pack it down. Add soil if necessary to bring the area up to the proper level, then pack down again

• Cut a landscape timber in half

The next step involves cutting one of your 8-foot landscape timbers in half. The purpose of this step is to furnish you with the side pieces for your border planting.

• Use corner braces to build the corner

Before building the corners, we formed a temporary corner by laying out the landscape timbers (one 4-footer and one 8-footer, placed so as to form an elbow) in the corner area. The string and stakes were still in place, so that we could

Landscape Timbers Garden

double-check ourselves.

This is an especially helpful step for those of us who are absent-minded. For example, it would have been easy for us to forget that we needed to build the corner in such a way that it would come out 4 feet 3 inches away from the fence (measuring to the outer face of the landscape timber), rather than just 4 feet. Exactly how you join the two landscape timbers together to form a corner determines whether or not you stay true to that measurement.

• Set the corners you have formed into place

Once the two corner pieces are in place, now you can “bridge the gap” between them by filling in with the two remaining 8-foot landscape timbers to complete the 32-foot-long side.

• Use mending plates plus an idea for landscape timber beds

What we do in this is arrange the two landscapes timbers down on their sides and abutted them, spanning the crack between with an example of a mending plate, just so that I could provide you with a close-up photo demonstrating what a mending plate is and why it’s useful in such a project.

One Response to “Way to Design With Landscape Timbers Garden”

1. robin farsworth says:

   August 18, 2012 at 5:57 am

   Landscape timbers are available in a variety of sizes and shapes. Most are wooden, but some are made of recycled plastic or composite materials.

   Reply