Stopping grass creeping under chainlink fence

morg_monster

On one side of our garden we just have a low (3ft) chainlink fence separating us from our neighbours. This suits me just fine - it's the south side so means we get a ton more sun in our narrow garden than we would with a standard wooden fence. However our neighbours are not gardeners and have edge to edge lawn, which they keep mown but it inevitably creeps under the fence into my borders. I'm halfway through the annoying and sometimes painful job of digging / pulling out the grass so would like to put down some kind of barrier at the bottom of the fence to stop / slow it growing back.

I've been looking at lawn edging but many of them seem to have a thickness or corrugated nature that require a trench to be dug; with 10m or so to do, and numerous shrubs and things in the way, I'd like to avoid this, would prefer to just have to "dig" a slot with our lawn edger. Are there any "flat" lawn edging solutions out there that don't cost the earth? And how deep do they need to go to stop most of the grass?

Or are there other alternatives I've not considered?

To be fair this is only half the grass problem in the garden ... our lawn is separated from the borders by a figure of 8 path with weed membrane under, but the grass has grown under it, through the cracks between slabs and into the border on the other side. So annoying! At least I can use weedkiller on the path.

titchylin

i have same problem ... have a perennial border my side so easy maintenance - not with grass/weeds coming through - i have top part a good growth of 'carpet of snow' which has grown thru - looks nice flowering now - but what my dear minimalist neighbours have done is to put weedkiller all along - arghhhhhhhhh - looks terrible - doesnt get rid of grass and i will be most upset if it kills off my plants

ariba10

You need some sort of barrier such as something like a roofing slate put down (on edge) at the bottom of the fence with about 75% below ground level and the rest above.

It is the roots you have to stop from spreading.