woodwaywa
New Member
Greetings!
I'm looking for some advice on how best to deal with the unfortunate conjunction of the mature trees in our driveway and the existing concrete. We plan to demo the entire driveway and replace with a more tree friendly design (large paver blocks with large permeable gaps) and the area outlined in magenta in these photos will be removed and mulched completely (more or less). The challenge that you can maybe see from the first photo is that the edge of the existing drive runs to the garage and so removing the hard surfacing (or at least driveable) closest to the trees is a bit tricky to accommodate. A natural option would be to snake the drive to the other side to give the trees more room, but here we are constrained by a septic drainfield that we can't cover with hardscaping and so we're trying to balance how we can retain a 2 car wide garage in harmony with helping the trees.
The trees have been here since before the (1970's) house I think. They're over 100' tall and are 2 x deodar cedars, 1 x Norwegian Spruce and also a more recent vine maple. The stump you can see is from a large cherry that we removed last year as it was growing at a very strange angle and was making it hard to replace the roof of the house that was past its life.
The grade is such that one option we're considering is to use an air spade to try to move some soil from beneath the largest roots on this side, fill the void with gravel and then instead of topping with 4" of hardscape (which we can't because the root occupies probably 3" of that), perhaps put a metal grate over this side. In cross section a bit like this?
Might this approach be viable or are we kidding ourselves that this is going to work?
Here are some photos and descriptions to make it a little clearer what we're trying to solve for.
The area outlined in magenta we plan to rip out the concrete and mulch to give the trees a little more room that isn't covered in concrete.
The area in green is what we're most unsure of. The previous owners had cut out a trench to accommodate one root from the Deodar, but as you can see the roots are basically pushing up and cracking this area. The mature cherry that was also here before has now been removed as it was obstructing the drive so much we were unable to get the re-roofing done so unfortunately we decided to remove it. Without taking up this concrete, we can't be sure how much of the damage is being caused by the now removed cherry or the cedar.
Another angle of the main problem area.
I guess my question really is, if this was your drive, and you were planning to remodel it anyway, what would you do?
Many thanks for any suggestions!
Roger
(Washington State, Seattle area)
I'm looking for some advice on how best to deal with the unfortunate conjunction of the mature trees in our driveway and the existing concrete. We plan to demo the entire driveway and replace with a more tree friendly design (large paver blocks with large permeable gaps) and the area outlined in magenta in these photos will be removed and mulched completely (more or less). The challenge that you can maybe see from the first photo is that the edge of the existing drive runs to the garage and so removing the hard surfacing (or at least driveable) closest to the trees is a bit tricky to accommodate. A natural option would be to snake the drive to the other side to give the trees more room, but here we are constrained by a septic drainfield that we can't cover with hardscaping and so we're trying to balance how we can retain a 2 car wide garage in harmony with helping the trees.
The trees have been here since before the (1970's) house I think. They're over 100' tall and are 2 x deodar cedars, 1 x Norwegian Spruce and also a more recent vine maple. The stump you can see is from a large cherry that we removed last year as it was growing at a very strange angle and was making it hard to replace the roof of the house that was past its life.
The grade is such that one option we're considering is to use an air spade to try to move some soil from beneath the largest roots on this side, fill the void with gravel and then instead of topping with 4" of hardscape (which we can't because the root occupies probably 3" of that), perhaps put a metal grate over this side. In cross section a bit like this?
Might this approach be viable or are we kidding ourselves that this is going to work?
Here are some photos and descriptions to make it a little clearer what we're trying to solve for.
The area outlined in magenta we plan to rip out the concrete and mulch to give the trees a little more room that isn't covered in concrete.
The area in green is what we're most unsure of. The previous owners had cut out a trench to accommodate one root from the Deodar, but as you can see the roots are basically pushing up and cracking this area. The mature cherry that was also here before has now been removed as it was obstructing the drive so much we were unable to get the re-roofing done so unfortunately we decided to remove it. Without taking up this concrete, we can't be sure how much of the damage is being caused by the now removed cherry or the cedar.
Another angle of the main problem area.
I guess my question really is, if this was your drive, and you were planning to remodel it anyway, what would you do?
Many thanks for any suggestions!
Roger
(Washington State, Seattle area)
