The conclusion to the flowerbed.

I took yesterday off from work. Primarily, because it was my birthday and I didn't want to be at work. Happy bonus is that the weather was beautiful, and I was able to get the flowerbed I started over the weekend done.

This is where I left off on Sunday, and started Wednsday.

I decided to edge the bed with old roofing slates, the reasons being -
1) They can be shaped, sort of.
2) Environmentally friendly.
3) The price was right.

Roofing slates are pretty big, and I didn't need to hammer 14" of slate into the ground, even in an attempt to keep things out of the bed. This was really just so that the dirt didn't run away. Or ran away slower, at least.
Slate is a really under-utilized building material. Fire proof, rot proof, rodent proof, it's only enemies are acid rain, time and an errant tree falling on it. We still have a bunch of 100 year old roofing slates because of it's vertical durability.
Horizontally, it's durability is another matter. Remember that tree I mentioned? Well, a hammer works similarly.

My proof of concept.
(And my mason hammer.)

When struck on the face with a solid sharp blow, you can leave a very nice punched hole in slate. It's how they put holes in the slates to hang them on roofs.

A hole that matches the profile of my hammer end.

The reverse side blows out though, leaving a dished surface.

Cool.

Because of this nature, you can kind of predict how slate is going to work with you. What I would do is pick up a slate, and drop it on the lawn flat to see if there were any hairline cracks where it wanted to break. Barring that, I'd give them a good pop in the middle and see if that would inspire any cracking. From there I'd perforate a line when I'd prefer it to crack. 90% it would work, sometimes it would crack in weird ways.

split into 3.

I hammered them into the edge, I like to think decoratively. I needed to use a wood block because hitting hammer on stone would cause the stone to flake and splinter. Even using the wood block caused some cracking.

Edged!

Plant placement!

Right about this step it started to look a whole lot like the Crazy Old Cat Lady Backyard Cemetery Starter Kit. I had put slates in below each plant to further slow erosion, and to make little shelves to hold the plants where they belonged.
I started to second guess my decisions...

Tada! With plants planted and mulch!

Luckily, with the addition of mulch, it looks a whole less Crazy Old Cat Lady. I've put in 3 white, 2 dark pink, 1 light blue and one purple creeping phlox, 2 Sliver Mounds and 2 Lemon variegated Thyme.