Why you shouldn't do a "curb" border around your garden

When I first started The Tropical Paradise, the first thing I did was to make a curb border. That is, a low, flat border along the edge of the garden. I thought it looked great, and I have seen a lot of it. But it wasn't much later that I discovered that I had made a terrible mistake.

Having a curb border really speaks to the inner child in all of us. It's irresistible. You want to walk, like this kid is doing in the photo, balancing. I found that my friends, who really aren't kids anymore, were attracted to it like a magnet. Sometimes they would balance as they talked on their cell phones. But one misstep, and a foot comes down, hard, in the garden, on the plants.

You could, of course, put up a stupid sign that tells people what to do. But if you need to do that, you have just created a poor design. But there is a solution, that works just as well and is more beautiful.

Pointy rocks.

Edging your garden with pointy rocks discourages balancing acts. And, in fact, it looks much better than a curb. Curbs belong in parking lots, not gardens.