How to smarten up your garden in ten minutes:

Honestly, I have said this before, and I will no doubt say it again, but edging your beds and borders is the single quickest, easiest way to make your garden look smart.

Here's a nice example: it's a big bed, which is looking a bit sad and bedraggled after the winter.

Things are just starting to show green again - that's a mass of Helenium at the back - but by and large, it is not really a sight to warm the heart. (With apologies to the owners, who are, unlike this bed, indeed a sight to warm the heart - lovely people!)

So out come the edgers, and round I go, clipping the edge. I did the little island bed as well, while I was at it.

Lo! And behold!

Doesn't that look better?

Not only does it make the entire garden look smarter, but when the grass starts to grow, which it will be doing shortly, it will be much easier for the mower to cut neatly right up to the beds, with none of that panicky edge-of-the-world stuff, where one wheel of the mower suddenly disappears down into the bed, leaving a horrible scalped patch for months on end.

Instead, they can whizz round at top speed, safe in the knowledge that they can see where they are going.

And it only took a few minutes to do!

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