Will I regret a gravel driveway?

[Becauseyouaskednicely]

This is my house. I have a tarmac driveway and then paving slabs closer to the house. It’s all very tired looking and needs sprucing. I plan to create a flower bed the whole width of the downstairs window and paint the side gate black. Also need to tidy up the front garden. I would looove to add gravel to the tarmac and paving slabs closer - I think it looks so lovely and almost every other house on my street has gravel. I would do this myself using gravel grids as I’m on a budget. But I’m worried I’ll regret it! Can’t afford to otherwise re-do the drive. So please let me have your thoughts:

1. Option 1 - cover the tarmac and paving slabs with gravel.
2. Option 2 - jet wash the paving slabs and use tarmac refresher paint on the gravel but otherwise leave as is, you will regret the gravel.

The gravel will get all over the street and its bloody annoying.

this is a very personal opinion: to me gravel just screams I cannot afford to do the job properly so opted for cheap and nasty loose gravel.

that said, tarmac restorer does not last long, will probably need redoing every 2 - 3 years

I suppose the exception where gravel is a good choice is if you live in a stately home and need a horse-and-carriage-friendly surface underfoot. If that's the cases have at it, the team of groundskeepers and gardeners will look after it.

Love my gravel , so much better for the environment . Plus no bastard can come up my drive without me hearing ( so can duck down if I don’t want to see them )

lol you have to double check everything yourself I found with CGPT. It’ll start off making sense but then when you dig down to refine a plan or estimate it often suddenly goes a bit wonky. (Probably on purpose to make you upgrade to the ‘better’ paid version!).

You are only allowed a gravel driveway if you promise to sweep the pavement regularly and keep the gravel weed- free.

I did a little tally as I drove along my road today - numbers go up to about 200 houses and I only counted 2 other tarmac driveways. The remainder are 2/3rds gravel and 1/3 lovely looking pavers. Some of the gravel drives did look a bit messy but most were well maintained.
But you have all put me off - I will be jet washing my driveway, sorting out plants and otherwise leaving as is.

I’m already overwhelmed by my garden and pond, I can’t be adding regular maintenance if my driveway to my to do list!

we had an area done in gravel around my greenhouse. It was about the same size as your area and its come in at about a grand. Thats in a garden though so we didn't need retaining grids or any sort of edging.

that neatly sums up that (as ever) looks are in the eye of the beholder:
1/3 "lovely" paviours
2/3 gravel without an adjective

I'm glad you have decided to stay with your tarmac drive. We have a gravel drive and can't afford to tarmac it, I wish we could. It is full of weeds, and the gravel is slippery.

My friends have gravel laid in grids and that is full of weeds too.

It might look good when it's first laid, but it will not stay like that.

Gravel gets stuck in the treads of your shoes and walks into the house, its hard to walk on in heels, you cant push wheels over it and cats think its one big litter tray. I hated mine and got it flagged over as soon as I could.

We regret having gravel! Forever clearing cat poo from it, used as a litter tray by many. I'd go for resin if we were to re-do!

Gravel looks good, drains freely, and makes a noise when people approach- so provides some security.

Just get the right kind of gravel. Small, round “pea gravel” will go everywhere, get caught in car tyres etc. you don’t want that. Instead get angular crushed stones. They tend to knit together and don’t travel like round pea gravel.

I saw a neighbour sweeping up their gravel and went out to do some market research. His drive used to look like mine and he got gravel 20 years ago because he didn’t like the tarmac. He’s been happy with the gravel ever since and just has to sweep it up every once in a while. He also said he topped up gaps with a bag of gravel maybe once a year. His drive is so pretty and he really sold it to me!

Another that says the weeding to be fine with gravel is a nightmare- you have to be totally on top of it or it just gets out of control and looks awful

If I had what you've got, I'd get the tarmac jetwashed to clean it up a bit and replace some of the slabs in the garden area with gravel. I wouldn't put gravel on top of tarmac as you lose one of its benefits - it allows excess rainwater to soak into the ground rather than running into the sewers and causing localised flooding in intense rainfall. Our road is prone to this as we have clay soil locally, sloping farmland and loads of houses that have paved over their front gardens so water runs off into the drains. It's becoming a big problem in some areas.

Making some borders for flowering shrubs would look nice and would only require weeding - and tbh a lot of people make weeding harder because they leave it until there's tons of big weeds, instead of zapping them when they're small. I have a gravelled area in my front garden which does get weeds in, I pick them out when I spot them sprouting. I also have a tarmac drive, a lot shorter than yours, and one day I will replace it with stone slabs.

What you have looks nice and just needs a clean up. Gravel will need topping up every few years.

If your neighbour has a dog they will bark every time you do anything in your garden as they can hear you …. could just be my dog though 😆

I agree, gravel on top of tarmac will be like walking on marbles. For gravel the tarmac needs digging out, some hardcore bedding down - probably a good few inches and the some form of retaining barrier along the edges. Even multiplying the OPs budget by 10 might not cover that at it’s a chunk of work!

Gravel is quite hard work and of course looks lovely until the weeds come and it pings everywhere

definitely not gravel

You would need to take the tarmac up before you can lay gravel. You will need proper edging or it moves everywhere. It’s definitely not going to be as cheap as you think.

We have gravel. A lot of it as we have a very long drive and also a long shared bit with our neighbours (well we own it but they have right of access). I like the look of it and the fact I can hear anyone on it but it’s definitely not low maintenance. We can’t change it either due to planning regulations where we live.

You really need to keep on top of the weeds. No cats around here thankfully so we don’t have issues with them using it as a toilet. Our elderly dog hated it.

Our previous house had a long tarmac drive which had definitely seen better days but replacing it would have been eye wateringly expensive so we just lived with it.

You can buy sodium hypochlorite online and that will do a much better job especially on any black algae on the slabs. Just be careful to use all safety precautions - gloves, eye protection etc. And don't wash it into the street /anywhere where it will go into street drains and into your local river.

How would you deal with the grids if you get gravel?

Your driveway looks in a good state of repair. I'd refresh it.

Gravel (unless you want grey and drab) is expensive and you'll need a lot. Then the grids are costly. To give you an inferior surface that requires an awful lot more maintenance.

I am forever weeding ours.