When you’re installing a beautiful new gravel driveway, it’s a sound investment in both the aesthetic of your property and the value of your home. Good preparation is essential to ensure a long-lasting and low maintenance gravel driveway. Part of good driveway design and preparation includes considering the location of trees and their roots.
The risk to tree roots beneath gravel driveways
When soil is compacted beneath a driveway, eventually, tree roots may crush and suffocate. Without healthy roots, a tree will not thrive. If there are trees in and around the area where a new driveway will be, you’ll need to protect their long-term health by not subjecting their roots to regular, heavy loads that will ultimately damage them. Protection can be achieved by installing a specialist system that evenly spreads the vehicle loads that use the driveway.
How to protect trees and roots around a new driveway
It’s possible to include trees in the landscape and driveway design by planning a layout around trees and their roots. Layout planning could involve creating a tree ring where trees become a feature of the driveway design, or if space allows, planning a driveway route around trees. However, lack of space often means avoiding all tree roots is complicated, if not impossible. Instead, installing a robust sub-base that provides tree root protection is the best solution. Groundcell is a tree root protection system that spreads the weight and impact of traffic using a driveway while creating a solid and stable base for the driveway to be installed over.
An easy-to-install tree root protection system
Groundcell is simple to fit. Once the driveway area has been prepared and levelled, any remaining hollows are filled with clean angular stone or sharp sand. Over this, a heavy-duty non-woven geotextile fabric is fitted (we recommend Earthworx NW1000). Groundcell panels are expanded and laid over the top of the fabric, then secured with specialist pins. Groundcell’s honeycomb design is then overfilled by a mimimum of 25mm with sub-base material and lightly compacted. Beauxfort Gravelrings are laid over the Groundcell system, which keeps the finishing gravel in place in its clever circular design.
Achieve the perfect gravel driveway with Beauxfort’s Groundcell and Gravelrings system. Check out our website www.beauxfort.com for more information about the Beauxfort landscape systems, design inspiration and to request a free sample, or talk to our friendly team about your project by contacting us on 0330 055 2599 or info@beauxfort.com.
