What instead of gravel?

What size gravel?

brass monkey ( snipped-for-privacy@b.com) wibbled on Friday 28 January 2011 09:07:

"grass grid" or something like that...

I've also heard of railway ballast finished with an inch or so of topsoil. The soil works into the top layer of the ballast - sow hardy grass or for a more bombproof and droughtprood greenery, clover.

The car wheels will indent the grass but will hit stone immediately avoiding muddy ruts.

It must be 8 to 10mm but the weeds are such a !"£$" it's impossible to keep it looking good. Maybe I should rip it up and put 2 or 3 sheets of membrane.

Google for grass parking

I had an area like that at the last house. I simply mowed the weeds, added a bit of grass seed and after a while it ended up as "hard grass". Whatever you put under gravel weeds will always grow in the muck that accumulates between the stones.

Mike

If you want grass that you an park on, I have found that MOT type 1 covered in topsoil to about half an inch is OK.

If you want gravel that wont grow weeds forget the membrane. It's useless as seeds land on top along with dirt and rain, and they grow. Use pathclear twice a year.

It's expensive, but when I worked for a landscape gardening company, we used to strip the topsoil off, put three inches of scalpings (Crushed limestone with the fines left in) down, then compact it, then put gravel on top. Five years later, there were still no weeds except where we'd left holes for planting. It stayed slightly porous, so water could run away, too.

If you want to keep it looking green, then try something like this:-

Extra membraane probably won't help. Over the years, dirt accumulates in the gravel and gives the weeds something to grow in. Mine has been down for 12 years and is overdue to be lifted and sieved.

Colin Bignell

But presumably these weeds are wind blown seedlings growing above the existing membrane in the gravel. More membrane isn't going to help.

We have a large area of hard standing in front of our house which is tarmac covered with 5mm gravel, for aesthetic reasons. I'd never have the damn stuff again; it migrates everywhere (the house and car are full of it), it sticks to muddy boots, it grows weeds (even though there's tarmac under it, after a few years enough cr*p accumulates that weeds can grow), you can't easily work on cars on it (anything small you drop disappears, it sticks to greasy tools & parts, gets in your clothes & the trolley jack won't roll over it), it has to be regularly raked (& mud collected up), the grass edges grow into it and I'm sure there must be more reasons to hate it.

Thats the problem, you need 18mm gravel. My front garden & drive are