garden/lawn edging

Get yourself a nice halfmoon blade edger,either use string or stand on a thin plank and cut the edge at a very slight away from you angle. This needs to be done only once a year , then trim the edges as often as needed in the growing season,at least once a week. If the weather is hot the clippings will disappear without having to gather them up, depends of course how much edging you have.I regularly look after about 500 metres of edging!! My back is now proof of that. But if the edges are tidy the garden looks so much better.

All I would add to above is buy a stainless steel edger.Cheaper ones bend dont stay sharp and soil sticks to blade.Best to do when soil moist as edges stay crisper and easier to slice through.

I block paved around my lawns- works well if that look suits your garden.

Even if you block pave to make it neat you still have to edge to the paving but you won't have to buy the half-moon cutter. by the way some people use a spade but the slight curve of the spade does not make for such a good result.

I agree with the half-moon edger answer, but for in between sessions of lawn edging I have a little electric hand machine which I find very useful. Its head swivels from flat to diagonal to right-angled so that I can alternate between cutting the edges that the mower misses, to using it like side-shears, only quicker.