How to create a beautiful garden design

6 May 2022

Garden design is crucial to create a manageable but visually high-impact beautiful garden. Autumn and winter are the perfect time to plan your garden ahead of next spring, so now is the ideal time to get inspired, research and plan the best garden design to suit your lifestyle.

Keeping an outdoor space in a picture-perfect condition requires year-round hard work, especially if you have mixed use areas, but by designing your garden with intention, you’ll have more time to relax in it rather than being a slave to its maintenance.

Having provided customers with garden edging products NZ wide for over 20 years, we enjoy seeing our metal landscape edging used in transformational garden designs. Whether your outdoor space needs a pick-me-up, or you are planning a complete garden design overhaul, here are our top observations of beautiful garden designs.

Proportion

This is perhaps the most important aspect of garden design. Design a garden in proportion to the property. Too often large properties have borders and planting that, in comparison to the house, look rather awkward – too small with too few plants. If you have the space, be generous with both borders and planting.

The relationship between the property and the proportions of the borders and features is key. Think of the garden and house holistically, rather than as an accessory or separate entity, use your design to connect them.

Balance

The most beautiful gardens combine lines, symmetry, and shapes to match the style of the surroundings, but also have a visual balance between the layout of softscape and hardscape elements.

EverEdge Garden Edging on a lawn against a stone wall

What are hardscape elements?

Hardscape elements of garden design include paths, garden bed edging, walls, water features, decking and sitting areas.

What are softscape elements?

Softscape involves the plants; not just the colours but their horticultural needs, how they change over the seasons, their lifespan, size, speed of growth and the all-important seasonal appearances.

Landscape edging is an element of garden design that marries hardscape and softscape elements, an easy garden fix to make any space orderly. Giving clarity to distinct zones of a garden while renovating rough edges of paths and borders, garden edging creates an easy to maintain, functional and attractive feature – a beautiful garden doesn’t have to be a labour of love.

Complement your surroundings

The internet is awash with images of beautiful gardens. Travel and other people’s gardens are always inspiring; however, what works in a Balinese courtyard may not translate quite so well to a south facing Christchurch NZ garden. Try not to let your imagination run wild and design a garden to complement and celebrate the characteristics and growing conditions available to you.

Whether your tastes are more traditional, or you prefer a contemporary garden design, your garden is a private idyll. To learn more about how metal landscape garden edging is used in beautiful garden designs, contact the team today, or call 021 925 389 for a free no-obligation chat.

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Man installing edging along a lawn path in a garden.

The gardener’s guide to avoid garden edging mistakes

by Simon Mullinger • 25 August 2025

A well-designed garden isn’t just about the plants you choose; it’s the finishing touches that make all the difference. Garden edging frames your beds, pathways, and lawns, creating a clean, structured look while keeping soil, mulch, and grass exactly where they should be. But despite its time-saving capabilities, small mistakes during planning or installation can leave you with an untidy or high-maintenance garden – exactly what you didn’t sign up for. As a supplier of the best high-quality steel landscape edging products in New Zealand , EverEdge has heard it all – from shallow installs that allow grass to creep back in, to cracked or warped materials that ruin a carefully designed border. To help you get it right the first time, here are the top three garden edging mistakes and how you can avoid them. 1. Choosing the wrong edging material One of the most common mistakes is selecting edging that doesn’t stand the test of time. Plastic and timber edging might look appealing initially, but they deteriorate quickly over time, accelerated by harsh weather. Plastic warps under the sun, while timber is prone to rotting and shifting. Both often require replacement within just a few seasons. Even if you opt for the more expensive concrete garden edging it is vulnerable to ground movement and freeze-thaw cycles. By contrast, metal landscape edging, particularly steel garden edging, offers durability, flexibility, and a clean aesthetic. It can be shaped into sweeping curves or sharp angles without cracking, and it resists corrosion for decades. EverEdge products are designed for professional results and are trusted by landscapers across New Zealand for everything from garden bed edging and metal tree ring edging to driveway edging. Choosing a long-lasting material from the outset saves you time, money, and endless frustration down the line. 2. Installing at the wrong depth Even the best edging material won’t perform if it’s not installed correctly . A frequent error is laying edging too shallow. This allows mulch and soil to spill over and gives grass and weeds the perfect opportunity to creep back into your beds. Too deep, on the other hand, and the edging becomes buried, disappearing from sight and failing to give that crisp separation between lawn and border.