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Homes on Small Streets Require Gravel Parking Areas

Homes on small streets sometimes require gravel parking areas in the front.
When guests come over, these graveled areas provide much needed overflow parking which is much safer than any attempt to park on a narrow one lane street. They also provide much needed room for additional vehicles that get added to the family as children grow up and start to drive.

Although gravel parking areas are not technically the same thing as gravel driveways, it is important that they be constructed at a near equivalent, if not equivalent, level of quality to that of a gravel driveway. Many people take a do-it-yourself approach to building these parking zones by laying down a crushed gravel surface area along the strip of grass that runs alongside of the street.

This may save the homeowner the cost of hiring a professional Houston landscaping company like Exterior Worlds to build the parking area, but it will also drive the homeowner crazy with constant demands for maintenance. Stone gravel has to be raked periodically to maintain its shape. It is also loose enough for weeds to take hold, so homeowners have to weed the parking zones.

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It is much better to let Exterior Worlds build your gravel parking area as alow maintenance landscape element that will retain its form and contribute to your property’s aesthetic value.
This involves us doing more than simply spreading gravel across a strip of lawn. We first have to excavate down a ways and lay a foundation of densely packed materials that will allow for water to drain all the way down through the gravel. We want the material to be permeable to some extent, but not so permeable that weeds are growing to spring up anytime soon.

The gravel parking area itself will then be created by adding two or more layers of gravel. Normally the sizes of the stones used in different layers vary in order to give the structure the stability required for supporting vehicles and pedestrian traffic. If you hire us to do this at the same time you have the rest of your front yard landscaped, we can link this parking zone to your driveway, walkways, and other front yard elements.

We can choose colors of gravel that look much better than the generic gravel you buy at hardware or garden centers. The materials we use can so closely approximate the colors of your sidewalks, front yard patios, main driveway, and porch that your guests may have to take a second look before they realize it is gravel.

You can count on a gravel parking area to last for several years, if not decades, without any need for costly maintenance.
It will not crack like asphalt or concrete and therefore needs no surface repairs. Provided the right size of gravel pebbles are laid down in the right number of layers, the parking zone will be flexible as the earth slowly shifts beneath it, but also resilient enough to maintain its boundaries so that it does no lose its shape.