Until the last few years, we poured concrete, laid brick and pavers to create outdoor living spaces with safe uniform surfacing in all weather. This was the standard among landscape architects to ensure that humans, from toddlers to seniors with walkers, could get around the yard without risk.
Designers were careful to avoid serious liability from pedestrian accidents due to unorthodox surfacing. Slippery and irregular materials were the most common concern. Professionals know that should there be an accident, your homeowner’s insurance coverage may be affected if that paving does not conform to the Uniform Building Code.
The current trend in paving originated from environmental concerns of storm drain runoff into beach waters. Along the California coast, new construction or landscaping has to drain on site, which means all water must percolate down through the soil without any runoff beyond the property line. This resulted in the new trends of segmenting patios into smaller concrete squares with open gaps between them. Gaps use gravel, artificial turf or groundcover to make it look uniform, but each is a potential trap for the unwary or unsteady. This style spread well beyond coastal communities to encourage groundwater recharge benefits, then blossomed into a national love affair with unorthodox paving trends.
This is a paving style that evolved not for aesthetics or practicality, but for theoretical environmental benefits. As a result, a litany of problems has emerged with modern paving designs that may look appealing but are functionally difficult over the long term. Here are the top five issues:
1. SENIORS
Gaps between flags or pavers on the patio are a huge hazard to seniors who must step over each one as they walk across the surface. Even when filled with tiny gravel, these gaps are enough to destabilize a senior with a cane or especially a walker.
2. HIGH HEEL OBSTACLE COURSE
If every male designer had to negotiate this paving in stiletto heels, he’d never approve it. Truth is, gravel in patio areas is brutal to nice shoes, particularly expensive women’s heels that are scarred with each step. Backing into an unexpected paving gap while your attention is elsewhere makes them treacherous at cocktail parties.
3. BAREFOOT STONE BRUISE
Fine gravel or decomposed granite around pools or anywhere else you want to go barefoot can cause a stone bruise. Even the smallest pebble under the heel can be incredibly painful. There is nothing like poured concrete or equal surfaces for bare-footing around your house in warm weather.
4. UNSTABLE FURNITURE
The blending of flags or irregular unit pavers with filler gravels creates the combination of hard and softer surfaces. Most low end furniture is not designed to sit on the ground, just decks and solid patios. Here too is another liability. If a guest’s chair is so unstable they fall due to an unorthodox surface, then it becomes a risk.
5. HEAVING AND SINKING
That cute new gravel patio you made last spring is likely a mess now after the mud and water and heaving soils do their work. In expansive clay soils the solid materials either sink into the dense ground, it suffers huge drying cracks, or vertical heaving as they absorb water. Sandy soils not so much.
The landscape world has not changed, only the design motivations have. When our concern for ground water recharge exceeds human safety, or even the security granted by homeowner’s insurance, then the trend may not be sustainable. It happens periodically when folks try to force new ideas onto a very established world that hasn’t yet had the time to vet the method over many years.
For these reasons and many more, this style will fade away as weeds, sinking and litter contamination turn a pretty picture into a liability and maintenance problem. They’ll fill in those gaps soon enough, because the problems in design always get solved — one way or another.
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Maureen Gilmer is an author, horticulturist and landscape designer. Learn more at www.MoPlants.com
