How wide should a garden border be?

Borders are a great way to add interest to your garden. But how wide should a garden border be?

Well, there’s no hard and fast rule. Instead, it’s all about making sure that your garden border will be wide enough to accommodate the plants you’re hoping to add. To check, you can go out and measure the width of the shrubs and bushes that you’d like to plant.

As a general guide, standard-sized borders tend to be around 1.5m to 2m wide. 

If you’re pushed for space, you could consider going as small as 1m. However, the wider your border is, the easier it will be to manage. This is because a wider border will give your plants space to grow, and you won’t need to keep cutting back your plants to contain them. 

Narrow borders along a property boundary often won’t be much use unless you’re only planning to grow climbing plants. That said, even these should generally be planted at least 30cm away from a wall or fence.