I wouldn't use any. A pair of lawn edging shears will easily keep the edge neat and is one of the most useful tools i have bought for ages - wish I'd had them years ago. If you use an edging whose top edge is higher than the lawn it will be difficult to mow right up to it and if it is flush with the lawn the grass will try to grow over it. It isn't worth it.

Just googled lawn edging shears they look great, thanks for the tip

Don't economise on them though - good tools are always worth the extra and shoddy ones are a constant irritation.

I don't know about that, Steragram - I bought my last pair in Wilkinson's, and they're proving very satisfactory - and they were cheap! I prefer cheaper ones, so long as they do the job properly - the impossibility of getting anything sharpened properly these days means I don't mind replacing them when they get blunt either.
Agree with Steragram's remarks - the only exception is if you have sandy, loose soil, because the edge of the lawn keeps breaking and crumbling, and then some kind of edging is necessary. But wherever possible, no edging is a lot less maintenance.

Hi Lbsnoop76, if you can do without edging material I would, we have a border edged with bricks but it requires the same application of edging shears as the rest of the borders.
Personally I think inexpensive shears as long as you view them as needing replacement quite frequently are good. What I wouldn't do is skimp on the spade- we got one from Tesco with a fork- both are heavy to use and ended up "borrowing" one from my mother! Car Boot sales are good places to hunt down garden tools.

I would ask the question, why have a lawn at all in a garden that size?

I would definitely agree, a good quality edging iron is invaluable, but cheap ones break very, very easily - we went through 2 in one year. False economy. Don't bother with edging of any sort - a nice cleanly cut edge looks really good. I can't (with all respect) agree with Owdboggy on this one - even a really small lawn can set off and enhance flowerbeds, and the scent of newly-cut grass is one of the major joys of summer-time! In the first home we ever had, the grass area was so tiny I cut it with kitchen scissors!

I need some lawn as my daughter plays there in evening in summer, as back garden is in shady by 6pm, last year the front garden hosted many a teddy bears tea party, s need to keep some lawn, i will measure properly as i only estimated size

Ha ha kitchen scissors, that would have been so so neat:-) cheers
guys

Many hundreds of years ago when I was young my grandfather's idea of a garden was a lawn so flat and smooth you could play Snooker on it. Well you would have been able to if anyone had been allowed to actually walk on it. There was a 6 inch border round it of bare soil and then a Privet hedge which was perfect. The point of this, is that he kept the lawn edge by going round it with a builders trowel and a bucket of water. The wettened trowel was used to polish the soil. No grass dared grow through that hardened edge.

Gosh - doesn't sound like much fun for a child...

Sounds a bit like my father in law who was known to stake his daffodils...(he didn't have many)
Gattina I agree about the edging iron, the same thing happened to me, it was absolutely useless.
Bamboo, we are lucky here - there is an elderly ex blacksmith in the village who will sharpen and reset things, but my OH ids a dab hand with a sharpener too.