[stonecalc id=”stone-edging”]
Stone Edging Calculator Guide
Edging is the one stone project you buy by the piece, and the arithmetic is a division problem: border length divided by the space each stone occupies, which is its length plus the gap you leave beside it. This calculator does exactly that — enter the run of the border, the stone length, and the gap, and it returns a count. A 40-foot bed line with 12-inch stones and 1-inch gaps works out to 37 stones; butt them tight and it becomes an even 40.
The count is the easy half. The decisions that make edging look deliberate — gap or no gap, laid flat or stood on end, floated on soil or set in a trench — change both the number you order and how many seasons the border survives, so settle them before the division.
How Many Edging Stones per Border?
| Border length | 12-in stones, 1-in gaps | 18-in stones, 2-in gaps | 8-in setts, butted tight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 ft | 24 | 15 | 38 |
| 50 ft | 47 | 30 | 75 |
| 75 ft | 70 | 45 | 113 |
| 100 ft | 93 | 60 | 150 |
Add 5–10% on top of the count for splits, cuts at corners, and the culls every pallet hides. Curves quietly inflate consumption too: on a tight bend the gaps fan open along the outside face, so a serpentine bed line uses a handful more stones than the same length pulled straight.
Trench Setting Beats Surface Laying
Stones balanced on top of the soil become a scattered rockery within two seasons — mowers nudge them, frost tilts them, mulch buries them. The durable method is a trench: dig a channel one third to one half the stone height deep, spread 2 inches of stone dust in the bottom, and bed each stone into it with a mallet, checking the tops against a string line. The buried portion braces the stone against lawn pressure from one side and bed material from the other.
Height comes from orientation. Laid flat, a 12-inch stone gives length and stability; stood on end as a soldier course, the same stone yields 7–8 inches of visible border but occupies only its width along the run — recalculate with width as the length and expect the count to roughly double. For a mow-over edge, set the stones flush with the turf so the mower deck rides across; for gravel containment, keep them proud by an inch.
Edging usually arrives as the finishing touch on a larger job: the walkway stone calculator fills the path the border contains, and the gravel calculator covers the beds behind it. Count the border first, though — the containment going in before the loose stone is the difference between a crisp line and a cleanup.
[stonecalc_faq id=”stone-edging”]