How I finally got my driveway entrance looking right - what worked for me

I'm about three years into my own entrance redo and the bed width thing is so true it hurts. I did mine about 4 feet wide the first time and by year two the spirea was hanging over the pavement and getting clipped by the car mirrors. Dug everything out last fall and widened to 8 feet, replanted, and now I finally have room. Should have listened to my wife the first time when she said go wider.

One thing I did differently was skip the bare strip along the edge and instead used steel edging set about an inch above grade, with a band of half-inch crushed stone behind it. Our plow guy drags a blade right along there every winter and the stone just gets pushed around a bit instead of tearing out plants. I rake it back flat each spring, takes ten minutes. On the grasses, I never staked mine up at all and they flopped badly the first summer. Wish I'd known that trick. This spring I'm adding a third planting of Karl Foerster along the mailbox side because the two groups I have look so good, and yeah, always odd numbers. I bought five the second time around instead of one sad little clump and the difference is night and day.

On the pillar footings, I can back this up. Put mine in with sonotube forms down past frost depth five years ago and they're still dead level, even with the ground heaving like crazy some winters. My brother-in-law set his on a shallow pad and it tipped enough that the address numbers look crooked from the street now.

One thing I'd add is to run a soaker hose through the bed before you mulch. Mine was a pain to water by hand that first summer and a couple of the grasses got cooked before they ever took off.

Not sold on that steel edging idea, honestly. I ran a similar band along my apron and the plow guy caught the top edge two winters running, peeled a whole section back like a tin can. He told me anything rigid sitting proud of grade is basially a target when there's a foot of hard snow packed over it. Maybe your guy is careful, but mine is going as fast as he can at 6am. I just went back to a wide gravel shoulder with no edging at all, and the only maintenace is shoveling a few stones off the grass in April. Cheaper too.

On the bed widening, one thing that saved me after I did the same dig-out was laying down cardboard under the mulch before replanting. The quackgrass along our old bed edge came back through everthing the first time, and the second attempt with a couple layers of boxes flattened down stayed clean all season. Just overlap the seams good and it rots out by the next year. Also second the twine trick, I lost a whole clump of switchgrass to flopping my first go and assumed the plant was the problem, not me.

Update: finally got back out there after reading these. Took the cardboard idea and ran with it, couple layers under fresh mulch along the widened edge and the quackgrass hasn't poked through once. Also rippped out the rigid edging strip near the apron after that plow story, just graded a shallow gravel band instead. Grasses I tied up last spring got cut loose in fall and they're standing fine on thier own now.