Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The driveway is in


(Continuing the fertile theme of mistakes I make...)
This is the lower portion of our new driveway! And that is my car barely straddling the great divide. My big plan was to grow a rainwater-absorbing lawn down the center of the drive. I did measure the span between the tires to come up with the design. However I did not realize how hard and annoying it is to line up the car with the available concrete if you have 4’ between the runners and you do not drive a Humvee. Usually one set of tires is on the dirt between. In this setting, I'll probably get more wallows than grass.

So I am going to gravel the gap. It won’t be as nice as the grass, but will still serve the purpose of taking in rainwater instead of shunting it down to the storm drains. My flood-prone city needs all the unsealed ground we can give it.

Heed my poor example: If you put in a divided driveway like this, don’t make the gap as wide as I did!

2 comments:

Nancy said...

I've been thinking about your difficulty... how about a strip of DG (decomposed granite) or the rocks, but in the very middle, go ahead and plant the grass, or even a steppable ground cover of some kind?

Muddy Mary said...

Nancy, Now that is a good idea. I can picture the gravel with some short stuff like wooly stemodia, ice plant, fescue, thyme and yarrow growing out of the center of it. It would be great!