Given the way our summers keep getting hotter, I do think that increasing the amount of hard landscaping is only going to add to the problem. Gravel does heat up in the sun and releases that heat slowly. Green plants, even ones that are very well adapted to a hot dry environment, will cool instead. We inherited a sunny gravelled front garden/ driveway and when you opened the front door on a hot day you were hit by a wall of heat. We’ve removed a lot of it, (re-used by a landscaper friend), and planted sun tolerant ground cover for the driveway and mid sized evergreen shrubs and perennials on the garden side. No more wall of heat in the summer, more wildlife, more insects, more colour and flowers and more comments from passers-by about how nice to see a garden!
Thanks Kate, that's really interesting, I hadn't even thought about heat like that but you're right, while it keeps roots damp and cooler, it could be heating everything above ground as the stone absorbs the heat. Interesting.
I am walking my dog every day on a fallow piece of land that sits along train tracks and used to be the place where the slaughterhouses for the entire city were standing, basically in the middle of town. there still are beautifully cobbled pathways with huge basalt cobblestones but mostly the area is smashed stones, bricks and trampled earth, depleted of any soil. but as the year goes round one can see beautiful flowers and shrubs coming into season. right now there is a mass of light blue asters, tall grasses, thistles, and in may there are 30 different blooming species, at least the ones I could count. the plants behave a little like at Prospect Cottage, everything is slowed down, small but tough and resilient against the baking sun, wind, frost, rains. So this is a kind of “natural” gravel garden that can show us a little about which plants could be used and which thrive in such places, without having to make everything into mediterranean gardens, as beautiful as they may be.
Also agree. As someone who I inherited a coastal garden with a LOT of gravel (the front is all gravel with roses and a couple of shrubs) I can confirm that despite a weed suppressant layer underneath, weeding is a nightmare! I think previously it just got blasted with weedkiller on a regular basis ☹️. The ground underneath is pretty much devoid of (visible, at least) life, rather depressing. I am now in the process gradually converting areas of it back to a non- gravel, natural style and it's so great to see how quickly nature is returning..
Thanks for raising this really important question and for the thought provoking piece .
Hands Up ! I’m just in the process of creating some gravel borders to break up a driveway that is otherwise solid pavers . Given the predicted scarcity of water and fertiliser resources I’d decided that this might be worth trying , following the excellent model from Derry Watkins garden .
However I agree that soil biodiversity is unlikely to improve dramatically ! The front driveway is on a busy road and so I was looking for a less labour intensive . Time will indeed tell but at least above the gravel bees, butterflies etc are now browsing where nothing was there for them previously ,
Thanks again for raising this - we do need an informed debate about it
Thanks for sharing your experience Lorraine, it will be interesting to hear how the borders go they sound beautiful and great for pollinators. We'll always use some gravel in gardens, just interesting to discuss it.
Well I must admit to having large areas of recycled aggregate - last April I had a digger take up half the concreted yard outside the house, put it through crushers and dropped it back in situ with around 10% 'soil' mixed in. And its being planted up with grasses, euphorbias and lots of self seeded spp like verbascum and verbena. Despite a dry May/June (no watering) it thrived and was full of pollinators all summer - will see what next year brings. It will be 'wild' and provide a link between the formal house and garden and surrounding fields of my organic farm. We had plenty of aggregate to reuse from the clearance of an old barn. It too went through the crusher and been used to make garden paths and new gravel beds - not necessarily an economic saving, but has reduced the carbon footprint of the new garden considerably.
I think for new build gardens, urban and brownfield sites they could offer sustainable alternatives to imported topsoil. But it is interesting how much life an aggreggate substrate supports - I have plenty of earthworms for example, and the leaf litter will accumulate and kick start the formation of 'soil' - the beginning of an ecological succession
I'm not convinced about gravel as a sustainable element in these situations - for sure gravel can support lots of life, including life that can only grow in those conditions. But I'm sceptical about the way this is turning into a bigger trend under the banner of sustainable for the reasons in the main article. I'll share more posts on it in future to delve into the topic more.
It is a tricky one to assess - have been looking at this for a while when I try to calculate the carbon footprint of my garden - recycled agg beds locally sourced are relatively low maintenance compared with lawn for example, no use of mower, fertilisers, weedkillers (!), can be more florally diverse, can be self perpetuating so no purchase of new plants, composts, plastics .... look forward to reading more
I agree with your view on gravel use in the garden and appreciate you bringing it up. It needs to be said. But I have a couple of howevers:
You talk about 'essential use on some paths and seating areas' - really, essential? Following your own argument, if everybody gravelled their paths and seating areas that too would be a huge amount, and the way you put it in your newsletter excuses that use. There are plenty of recycled hard surfaces that can be used such as the slabs you laid for your new terrace recently, recycled bricks - some of my paths are just packed earth and have become so well-trodden that they aren't horribly muddy when it's wet. And this year I experimented with not cutting my lawn at all and found that the paths I made through it stayed short and green and healthier than the rest of the lawn, so grass paths are an option too.
And what about the cost to the environment of digging out and transporting gravel for gardeners? It's huge, as I found when I was considering supplementing the gravel on my patch, which I laid down 30 years ago and is rather thin and weedy now. I also found that there's a quarry not a couple of miles from my house where I could have bought some, but I decided not to in the end, based on the same arguments that you give in your article and am letting wildflowers fill it. It looks wonderful in the summer and spring and bearable for the rest of the year. So for those intent on using gravel there is a possibility of reducing the harm to the climate by sourcing it locally.
I love your newsletter thank you, it's always interesting and useful and thought-provoking.
Yes they’re good points Sally, I guess I should have defined my idea of more essential. I agree with you that we always have to question if something is necessary. And always try to reuse and source locally.
I am very interested in grass paths like you too. I had gone off them because I don’t like the look of immaculate old fashioned lawn. But I am really warming to the flower filled rough and ready ones like in our garden. I found paths cut through meadow grass stay pretty short with little mowing too.
Sep 22, 2023·edited Sep 22, 2023Liked by Jack Wallington
So interesting to read this. After visiting a nearby dry garden I have been wondering about this, so good to hear you raising and discussing it … similar questions have been running through my mind … how can this be a solution? Surely working with what is there would be better? Also, not so much on the gravel, but with regard to the concrete and other building waste that is being transported in and added to the existing soil … I’m all for reusing things rather than adding them to landfill without even trying to find an alternative, but surely this is just polluting the land as well (are there not toxins/chemicals in there, which will be around for a long time?) and there must be some better way to reuse/recycle/avoid it?! Love your posts.
Thanks Rachel, you've summed up the questions and thinking I share too. I feel the same way about the recycled building waste. I guess if all you have already is concreted paving or something it could be interesting? But on existing soil, I wouldn't do that myself.
Yes, interesting, I guess planting anything onto what was just existing concrete could potentially be a good thing. As with anything, it’s never straightforward, which is why discussion is good :)
Thank you for introducing such a great topic. I’m averse to gravel in the quantities that garden show presenters advise us to use. How did we get by before it became the fashion to finish off every container, pot or seed tray with a gravel topping? (Answer - perfectly well). If, like me, you have no transport and don’t fancy doubling the cost of your purchases by taking taxis, bags of gravel are a luxury easily foregone. Getting just one immensely heavy sackful home from the outer London garden centres to my flat in town has to be planned like a military campaign. I need to know where every lift and escalator is. Impossible, even with a trolley, to lift even a single large bagful up into a bus or railway carriage, or up and down steps (and they have a habit of splitting!). One sack a season is plenty for me. Getting it home is my worst gardening day of the year. Euphorbias and alpines love it. I don’t waste it on anything else. I get a much better return from heavy manual labour by lugging bags of all-purpose compost around (apologies for this, but I don’t have a ‘proper’ garden, and I do make the compost last).
That's an interesting point Ian, I hadn't thought about including gravel or grit in containers in this post because I'm more concerned about gardens that cause fundamental damage to large amounts of soil be changing the topography unless totally necessary. Pots on balconies are always going to be tiny by comparison and more essential for compost and brought in aggregate use because you have no other options. I was always surprised by the people who put grit on top of seed trays and pots. I've never understood why. I guess to put off slugs and snails or something? Anyway, I've never used it except for plants that need super free draining composts as you say, like alpines outside and cacti indoors. I always found terracotta pots were free draining enough for plants like herbs, but everyone has their own experiences.
I live on the outskirts of London in the southeast and am embarking on redesigning what has been a typical urban garden dominated with a large lawn with thin borders. It has remained largely unchanged since the house was built in 1970 when my parents first moved in.
Coming across this post therefore has been very timely and helpful as I’m trying to grapple with sustainability, environment, low maintenance and aesthetic design issues in a holistic way. We also have a south westerly orientation which means that our back garden and house catches the full brunt of the evening sun during the increasingly severe heatwaves we’ve experienced over recent summers. Just from that aspect alone I’m now reconsidering my use of gravel for even small areas due to the way it acts as a heat sink as pointed out by others here.
But on the issue of bagged compost I have over the last few years being experimenting in ways to reduce the use of purchased bags of compost. This year I’ve not had to purchase any at all and last year I only needed a couple of bags for the pots and veg planters I have in a 10x5 metre garden. We have a large compost bin and a hotbox next to it and this produces sufficient compost to mulch all of the borders in spring. But it also gives me enough to mix in with the previous years spent compost along with a small addition of fertilizer/manure in order to rejuvenate it for the new season.
This will also be my first season to trial the effectiveness of green manures in spent soil. I should add that I’m a novice gardener if the above didn’t already show it hahaha.
I realise that some may be aghast at the above and wonder about things like pest/diseases when recycling used compost, crop rotation etc but after reading that some eccentric gardening folk re-use the same soil and compost for years without seemingly any significant decrease in yields I feel that its worth trying things that may go against garden orthodoxy in the search for more sustainable plots. I may fall flat on my face and nothing will grow this year but I’ll have learnt something!
A very thoughtful article – thank you, Jack! There must be a balance in all things, and all of the cost to bringing in gravel to be on trend is a really good point. In the US where we have large urban and suburban areas, planting straight into building material is a very exciting idea because it prevents scraping it out and bringing in topsoil. But it is mad to scrape out rich healthy soil, and put in aggregate. Perhaps this is just a rich man’s game? As designers we should be advising people to work with what they have in a sustainable manner.
Given the way our summers keep getting hotter, I do think that increasing the amount of hard landscaping is only going to add to the problem. Gravel does heat up in the sun and releases that heat slowly. Green plants, even ones that are very well adapted to a hot dry environment, will cool instead. We inherited a sunny gravelled front garden/ driveway and when you opened the front door on a hot day you were hit by a wall of heat. We’ve removed a lot of it, (re-used by a landscaper friend), and planted sun tolerant ground cover for the driveway and mid sized evergreen shrubs and perennials on the garden side. No more wall of heat in the summer, more wildlife, more insects, more colour and flowers and more comments from passers-by about how nice to see a garden!
Thanks Kate, that's really interesting, I hadn't even thought about heat like that but you're right, while it keeps roots damp and cooler, it could be heating everything above ground as the stone absorbs the heat. Interesting.
Yes! That was a thought. I had right away when reading his article. To gravel increases the heat.
I am walking my dog every day on a fallow piece of land that sits along train tracks and used to be the place where the slaughterhouses for the entire city were standing, basically in the middle of town. there still are beautifully cobbled pathways with huge basalt cobblestones but mostly the area is smashed stones, bricks and trampled earth, depleted of any soil. but as the year goes round one can see beautiful flowers and shrubs coming into season. right now there is a mass of light blue asters, tall grasses, thistles, and in may there are 30 different blooming species, at least the ones I could count. the plants behave a little like at Prospect Cottage, everything is slowed down, small but tough and resilient against the baking sun, wind, frost, rains. So this is a kind of “natural” gravel garden that can show us a little about which plants could be used and which thrive in such places, without having to make everything into mediterranean gardens, as beautiful as they may be.
Yes, these were among my favourite places to spend time in London :)
How lovely. I always found the empty lots teeming with wild plants and flowers so beautiful.
Also agree. As someone who I inherited a coastal garden with a LOT of gravel (the front is all gravel with roses and a couple of shrubs) I can confirm that despite a weed suppressant layer underneath, weeding is a nightmare! I think previously it just got blasted with weedkiller on a regular basis ☹️. The ground underneath is pretty much devoid of (visible, at least) life, rather depressing. I am now in the process gradually converting areas of it back to a non- gravel, natural style and it's so great to see how quickly nature is returning..
Yes, weed burning seems to be the only weeding solutions long term, since chemicals are not.
Hand weeding and hoeing in gravel are the most effective 💞
Thank you for sharing your observations too Rachel
Agree completely. And at last someone is saying it ! Thank you
Hi Jack
Thanks for raising this really important question and for the thought provoking piece .
Hands Up ! I’m just in the process of creating some gravel borders to break up a driveway that is otherwise solid pavers . Given the predicted scarcity of water and fertiliser resources I’d decided that this might be worth trying , following the excellent model from Derry Watkins garden .
However I agree that soil biodiversity is unlikely to improve dramatically ! The front driveway is on a busy road and so I was looking for a less labour intensive . Time will indeed tell but at least above the gravel bees, butterflies etc are now browsing where nothing was there for them previously ,
Thanks again for raising this - we do need an informed debate about it
Thanks for sharing your experience Lorraine, it will be interesting to hear how the borders go they sound beautiful and great for pollinators. We'll always use some gravel in gardens, just interesting to discuss it.
Well I must admit to having large areas of recycled aggregate - last April I had a digger take up half the concreted yard outside the house, put it through crushers and dropped it back in situ with around 10% 'soil' mixed in. And its being planted up with grasses, euphorbias and lots of self seeded spp like verbascum and verbena. Despite a dry May/June (no watering) it thrived and was full of pollinators all summer - will see what next year brings. It will be 'wild' and provide a link between the formal house and garden and surrounding fields of my organic farm. We had plenty of aggregate to reuse from the clearance of an old barn. It too went through the crusher and been used to make garden paths and new gravel beds - not necessarily an economic saving, but has reduced the carbon footprint of the new garden considerably.
That sounds nice Sally, the main concern for me is that point on changing areas with existing life in them.
I think for new build gardens, urban and brownfield sites they could offer sustainable alternatives to imported topsoil. But it is interesting how much life an aggreggate substrate supports - I have plenty of earthworms for example, and the leaf litter will accumulate and kick start the formation of 'soil' - the beginning of an ecological succession
I'm not convinced about gravel as a sustainable element in these situations - for sure gravel can support lots of life, including life that can only grow in those conditions. But I'm sceptical about the way this is turning into a bigger trend under the banner of sustainable for the reasons in the main article. I'll share more posts on it in future to delve into the topic more.
It is a tricky one to assess - have been looking at this for a while when I try to calculate the carbon footprint of my garden - recycled agg beds locally sourced are relatively low maintenance compared with lawn for example, no use of mower, fertilisers, weedkillers (!), can be more florally diverse, can be self perpetuating so no purchase of new plants, composts, plastics .... look forward to reading more
I agree with your view on gravel use in the garden and appreciate you bringing it up. It needs to be said. But I have a couple of howevers:
You talk about 'essential use on some paths and seating areas' - really, essential? Following your own argument, if everybody gravelled their paths and seating areas that too would be a huge amount, and the way you put it in your newsletter excuses that use. There are plenty of recycled hard surfaces that can be used such as the slabs you laid for your new terrace recently, recycled bricks - some of my paths are just packed earth and have become so well-trodden that they aren't horribly muddy when it's wet. And this year I experimented with not cutting my lawn at all and found that the paths I made through it stayed short and green and healthier than the rest of the lawn, so grass paths are an option too.
And what about the cost to the environment of digging out and transporting gravel for gardeners? It's huge, as I found when I was considering supplementing the gravel on my patch, which I laid down 30 years ago and is rather thin and weedy now. I also found that there's a quarry not a couple of miles from my house where I could have bought some, but I decided not to in the end, based on the same arguments that you give in your article and am letting wildflowers fill it. It looks wonderful in the summer and spring and bearable for the rest of the year. So for those intent on using gravel there is a possibility of reducing the harm to the climate by sourcing it locally.
I love your newsletter thank you, it's always interesting and useful and thought-provoking.
Yes they’re good points Sally, I guess I should have defined my idea of more essential. I agree with you that we always have to question if something is necessary. And always try to reuse and source locally.
I am very interested in grass paths like you too. I had gone off them because I don’t like the look of immaculate old fashioned lawn. But I am really warming to the flower filled rough and ready ones like in our garden. I found paths cut through meadow grass stay pretty short with little mowing too.
So interesting to read this. After visiting a nearby dry garden I have been wondering about this, so good to hear you raising and discussing it … similar questions have been running through my mind … how can this be a solution? Surely working with what is there would be better? Also, not so much on the gravel, but with regard to the concrete and other building waste that is being transported in and added to the existing soil … I’m all for reusing things rather than adding them to landfill without even trying to find an alternative, but surely this is just polluting the land as well (are there not toxins/chemicals in there, which will be around for a long time?) and there must be some better way to reuse/recycle/avoid it?! Love your posts.
Thanks Rachel, you've summed up the questions and thinking I share too. I feel the same way about the recycled building waste. I guess if all you have already is concreted paving or something it could be interesting? But on existing soil, I wouldn't do that myself.
Yes, interesting, I guess planting anything onto what was just existing concrete could potentially be a good thing. As with anything, it’s never straightforward, which is why discussion is good :)
Thank you for introducing such a great topic. I’m averse to gravel in the quantities that garden show presenters advise us to use. How did we get by before it became the fashion to finish off every container, pot or seed tray with a gravel topping? (Answer - perfectly well). If, like me, you have no transport and don’t fancy doubling the cost of your purchases by taking taxis, bags of gravel are a luxury easily foregone. Getting just one immensely heavy sackful home from the outer London garden centres to my flat in town has to be planned like a military campaign. I need to know where every lift and escalator is. Impossible, even with a trolley, to lift even a single large bagful up into a bus or railway carriage, or up and down steps (and they have a habit of splitting!). One sack a season is plenty for me. Getting it home is my worst gardening day of the year. Euphorbias and alpines love it. I don’t waste it on anything else. I get a much better return from heavy manual labour by lugging bags of all-purpose compost around (apologies for this, but I don’t have a ‘proper’ garden, and I do make the compost last).
That's an interesting point Ian, I hadn't thought about including gravel or grit in containers in this post because I'm more concerned about gardens that cause fundamental damage to large amounts of soil be changing the topography unless totally necessary. Pots on balconies are always going to be tiny by comparison and more essential for compost and brought in aggregate use because you have no other options. I was always surprised by the people who put grit on top of seed trays and pots. I've never understood why. I guess to put off slugs and snails or something? Anyway, I've never used it except for plants that need super free draining composts as you say, like alpines outside and cacti indoors. I always found terracotta pots were free draining enough for plants like herbs, but everyone has their own experiences.
I live on the outskirts of London in the southeast and am embarking on redesigning what has been a typical urban garden dominated with a large lawn with thin borders. It has remained largely unchanged since the house was built in 1970 when my parents first moved in.
Coming across this post therefore has been very timely and helpful as I’m trying to grapple with sustainability, environment, low maintenance and aesthetic design issues in a holistic way. We also have a south westerly orientation which means that our back garden and house catches the full brunt of the evening sun during the increasingly severe heatwaves we’ve experienced over recent summers. Just from that aspect alone I’m now reconsidering my use of gravel for even small areas due to the way it acts as a heat sink as pointed out by others here.
But on the issue of bagged compost I have over the last few years being experimenting in ways to reduce the use of purchased bags of compost. This year I’ve not had to purchase any at all and last year I only needed a couple of bags for the pots and veg planters I have in a 10x5 metre garden. We have a large compost bin and a hotbox next to it and this produces sufficient compost to mulch all of the borders in spring. But it also gives me enough to mix in with the previous years spent compost along with a small addition of fertilizer/manure in order to rejuvenate it for the new season.
This will also be my first season to trial the effectiveness of green manures in spent soil. I should add that I’m a novice gardener if the above didn’t already show it hahaha.
I realise that some may be aghast at the above and wonder about things like pest/diseases when recycling used compost, crop rotation etc but after reading that some eccentric gardening folk re-use the same soil and compost for years without seemingly any significant decrease in yields I feel that its worth trying things that may go against garden orthodoxy in the search for more sustainable plots. I may fall flat on my face and nothing will grow this year but I’ll have learnt something!
A very thoughtful article – thank you, Jack! There must be a balance in all things, and all of the cost to bringing in gravel to be on trend is a really good point. In the US where we have large urban and suburban areas, planting straight into building material is a very exciting idea because it prevents scraping it out and bringing in topsoil. But it is mad to scrape out rich healthy soil, and put in aggregate. Perhaps this is just a rich man’s game? As designers we should be advising people to work with what they have in a sustainable manner.
Yes if the construction industry has already ready trashed an area of garden we might as well work with the latest version of soil there.