Mowing the lawn - how do you do edges?

[Hattieboomboom]

We moved into a new house recently and have a small, newly designed/planted garden that consists of a patio and lawn on exactly the same level, a long bed and some small trees and giant bamboo all planted in the lawn along the length of a long wall. We've only got a flymo rather than a proper lawnmower, and the edges are a pain. The beds are all slightly deeper than the lawn so I thought we'd be able to mow straight over the edge - but the grass just gets pushed over into the bed and not cut by the flymo. I really don't want to waste any more of my life out on my hand and knees with a pair of scissors every time I mow but it looks so untidy otherwise. And i don't really want to get a strimmer either. Would a more decent mower do the trick? The bits of lawn in between the trees and bamboo up against the wall is also un-flymo-able, despite the gap we left between turf and wall.....

Any advice? Thanks in advance!

You need a thing that's sort of like a stick-blender, except for grass (DH does this...can you tell?). He sometimes uses secateers (sp?) too and a hoe to get the sort of knife-edge effect around the flower beds.

An alternative to an edging tool is to put some edging material around the edges of the bed. People often put a layer of bricks at the edge of the bed, flush with the lawn, so that the grass does not get pushed into the dip. I imagine this is quite expensive and labour intensive to do though. You could also plant things like hardy geraniums at the edge of the bed, which grow over the lawn edge, but seem to stand up to having a hovermower pushed up against them. The downside to this is that they kill off the grass around the edges, so in the winter, when the geranium goes underground you have a scrappy looking lawn.

Or do what I do and tell yourself that the messy edges are terribly bohemian!

Long handled lawn edging shears.
This sort of thing...

www.amazon.co.uk/Fiskars-LifeStyle-909770-Long-Handled-Handles/dp/B002SHSVZO/ref=pd_sim_lp_2

But you can get various makes at most garden centres, or Argos etc, for differing prices.