Edging inspiration for Japanese theme garden

I'm into the 2nd year of my first garden and I have chosen to plant oriental/japanese plants.

I'm yet to put down my bags of flint mulch as the planting hasn't really established too well yet, but I digress.

Anyway, at the moment my beds are almost level with the lawn but I have raked the beds back so they are 3-4 inches lower than the lawn at the lawn edge. My plan was to simply have no dedicated edging and just mulch up to a vertical lawn edge. However, I'm finding trimming the lawn edge with a strimmer a bit tiresome - it's quite easy to cut into the lawn edge and the cuttings fly into the beds and start rooting.

I know it will be easier to get a neater edge with edging shears, but I'll still need to clear cuttings from the bed after.

So thinking ahead to when I lay my mulch, I can't help but imagine that trimming the edges is going to become even more tiresome - not only will the same problems remain, I'll have the added nuisance of the mulch getting in the way of the strimmer/shears, flints flying all over the place and it will be more difficult to clear the mulch of the cuttings.

So, I was thinking it might be better to add some form of raised edging so the top edge sits above the lawn. This should make trimming the lawn edge easier and provide a deeper edge on the bed side so I can have deeper mulch.

Does this sound like a sensible plan? If so, what would people suggest? The cheaper the better please :-)

Thanks in advance for your help

 

I think it would be better to keep the ground level. Below there are some lovely edging ideas which are level with the lawn and easy to run over with the mower.

https://www.google.com/search?q=law...a=X&ei=qr5oVczkBMTmUo6QgDg&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQsAQ