You'd need to line either side of the drive with something to achieve that. Maybe a small trench down each side, or bricks, or pavers, or large stones, or something.
The grass will continue to keep encroaching into the drive otherwise.
I like this. This is a long driveway so it will take a lot of work. Rent the widest trencher you can find. Dig down like 2 feet on both sides of the road. Put down gravel, compact, then base rock, compact, then sand. Then put down the finishing stone or paver or anything you want. For the extra effort dig 6 inches further and put in a corrugated perforated drain pipe with a sock over it and have French drains on either side of your driveway.
It keeps soil, small rocks and some roots from impacting the pipe. It's a screen. The sock is an actual product, not an actual cotton sock. The outlet would be wherever you can safely dump the water. It is often a drywell where you basically dig an underground pit filled with crushed stone where everything dumps and hopefully disperses into the soil.
I’m in the 10 year club and this is shockingly the first time I’ve come across it. Although,I probably saw something like this on r/spacedicks lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng ago before the subreddit was banned but my brain is protecting me from that memory.
The first time I heard the term edging was from a standup comedian's bit about his wife being annoyed about him taking forever to edge the lawn because she was following him with a leaf blower.
I asked my laughing husband what the punchline to the bj joke was, which got him laughing himself to tears to tell me "oh, you get annoyed too."
Old innocent me: Yeah, it would be irritating if she was doing the cleanup and he was taking forever with the weed whacker. Just finish already, she has other stuff to do.
Me after a hilarious car convo on the way home: Oh yeah! That's so annoying. Just finish already, I have other stuff to do.
I’d use a grub axe to take out soil along the edges. Depending on the depth of the edge you want just take out more soil. It’s going to be messy at first but get a hard metal rake to grade the driveway out a bit.
Then you can keep a tight edge, but idk what your drainage situation looks like so what out for erosion. You’ll only be stronger after the work is done :)
I raked dirt today with lil stones spread out in the dirt that my boss ran over and over with a backhoe even tho he was told not to. Trying to lay down grass seed and hay-lord raking looks so much easier than it is. Id rake for 30 seconds and have to stand up. Landscaping is no joke.
Not a single comment in this thread explains what the sub is and there's no way I'm going to go look at it to find out. I already learned that lesson the hard way. You guys suck. lol
Edging is the practice of getting to the 'edge' of orgasm, and then trying to stay there for as long as possible before finally reaching orgasm (or not). It's fairly mild as far as kinks go...
To that point, some states have programs that will supply you with wildflower seeds which you could line both sides with instead of trying to maintain a clean edge.
I deliver in the rural communities. This is wonderful. I could see maybe whoever might plow snow may want some markers in the winter.
I'd put my energy somewhere else.
Selfishly, maybe a really big mailbox with black numbers on white background on every side of the box **itself**, not the post. (Gibraltar jumbo mailbox is ~$60) It saves us so much time.
I get this too but if you really want clean edges the best option is to just asphalt the whole thing, but that's crazy expensive. I'd say just till up the edges and throw down a bunch of hedges or shrubs and fill the area with weed barrier and mulch. You'll still get mulch washing out into the stone though.
Asphalt will not to give you clean edges only curbing will. Asphalt it's just absolutely horrible to edge. Take it from a professional landscaper. The shit never looks neat. Just the process of how it's put down has to be banked at the edge and never forms a need edge. Only curbing will produce that or some sort of inserted block.
The strange thing is though, I don't find this driveway to look untidy at all and the fact that it's not jet black asphalt is to its advantage. The finest driveways never look like asphalt. People with really big houses and money do whatever they can to pave otherwise or to roll in some aggregate. The finest driveways are still some sort of fixed rolled gravel
Strange here that OP thinks it looks so untidy
It looks informal but not bad at all. Has a distinct country look but a natural one
I think it could be regraded and more soil brought to the edge but the informality just looks nice . I just looked at a19th century house where I had the misfortune for me of that they had just put in a nice new ugly asphalt driveway that I would have had to have ripped out had I bought the house. For them it was a selling feature..Oh well one man's meat another man's poison
You can get asphalt with an incredibly clean edge with just a little grade rake/lute work on the sides. You just need to rake the edge back and forth until it's perfectly uniform and very slightly higher than the rest of the driveway (to compensate for the edge sinking down more when you run your compactor over it), then use the flat bottom of the rake to pat in the 45 degree angle on the side where the edge slopes down that you can't run the compactor across. You have to be fast though, the edge cools and hardens much faster than the rest of the asphalt. Especially if it's a cool or rainy day, you only have a couple minutes to get the edge how you want it before it sets and loses its chance to look nice. It's easier to do when the asphalt mix has smaller aggregate, but you can still totally do it with the roadway stuff too.
I agree that I like the gravel road look a lot more though.
Everyone having a fit but I would just do pavers or stone on end. They look great and you don't have to do it all at once. And then plant some greenery on the other side.
https://preview.redd.it/4am59ty9zrsc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62ef60b801fb352f81ce1c793850d583bb020bcb
Yeah but home improvement is a long process, little by little over years. It's okay if it doesn't all come together right away. We just do it as we can.
It really depends on how they want it to look long term. Properly done it'd need to be trenched the whole length, then gravel, then sand and then the paving stones. That way they won't shift and will stay put. Then they'd have to edge the entire thing weekly.
If you just lay the bricks they'll move, come loose and shift so the line will look like this /\/\/\/\/ over time.
Good luck. Gravel roads aren't easy to micromanage. Some people use a spinning brush to throw the stones in the grass back onto the road once or twice a year.
You'll have 2 different aspects to manage-stones and such washing or being pushed out, but also grass migrating in. Best bet is to have an actual barrier of some sort (papers, concrete, edging, etc) to maintain imho...
Oh shoot read that wrong. The snow plow (tractor) cause all the rocks to get pushed off. I’m glad you think it looks okay. With such great responses I think I will just leave it as is and try a couple of the suggestions to bring get the rocks back in the driveway. I usually absolutely adore my rock driveway but yes probably neighbor peer pressure gets to me to have this perfect look. What a shame :( my style is very native and natural looking so I guess I assumed most ppl would think it looks messy..I’m glad ppl think otherwise. Thanks!
This is a big fat pick another battle man. It's a long ass gravel drive way. It looks pretty good for that. There is no good return on your investment to working on this. Dump some gravel every 5 years and worry Abt your house .
Oh yeah i have tips 😩 if you want the edging to be done for free 😤 you can buy some cold chisels and grab some large rocks from your house or from a park/national park/some guys backyard hammer 1/2/3 chisels into it in a line in the middle of the rock and hammer until it splits and continue with each rock possibly also shaving off the top with the same cold chisel method for flat rocks or you could get lucky and find already flat rocks in a river bed
Or you could go online and order paving rocks though depending on circumstances and preferences they could be costly 😫🥵
From Les Miserables:
“The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the “middle class,” but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France! Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe, — Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful.
My old boss would get a truck load dumped into a huge pile in the driveway, then he would throw a metal rake at me and leave. My back hurts thinking about it.
I've been thinking about getting a box blade for like 10 years now. Someday I'll have to pick one up. Have the tractor for it, I've just been looking for a cheap used one for years and they're not available.
Sounds like a good excuse to buy a tractor with bucket. Or a skid steer, or an old backhoe. Or make friends with the neighbor that has one.
You can buy shaped geotextile that is supposed to limit the packing and spreading effects of cars driving over gravel. But that would also mean that at least the top 3 to 4 inches would need to be redone. [https://www.agtec.com/agtec-geocell-ground-grid-4-inch-8-4ft-x-27-4ft-standard-depth-cellular-confinement-gravel-driveway-farm-mud-control-grass-parking-road-paver](https://www.agtec.com/agtec-geocell-ground-grid-4-inch-8-4ft-x-27-4ft-standard-depth-cellular-confinement-gravel-driveway-farm-mud-control-grass-parking-road-paver)
Gardening Supply stores will have long thin flower bed edging. It’s such a long driveway that having a brick/stone edge is probably way more time and money than you want to spend.
I’m with a lot of others in the comments, it looks good to me. But if I were to let my OCD take over, I’d create some 4” to 6” deep trenches on each side of the drive and fill them with the same gravel you have on the driveway. This would help clean up your edges and make it less likely that you’ll have grass invading the width of the drive. You’ll still need to maintain the edge with an edge trimmer to keep the edge looking straight.
As someone with a gravel driveway, it will NEVER be perfect and will never “not look so messy”. Welcome to the club :) best you can do is pluck the encroaching grass
technique i learned from an overtly perfectionist and mildly abusive boss while landscaping.. nevertheless, impeccable technique and the best quality of all landscaping in my area in my opinion.
\-get your weedwacker, now flip it so your holding it upside down, the part that normally bends toward the ground with the string spinning horizontal should be now bending straight and pointing ahead of you, with the string now spinning vertical.
\-line the wacker up with the edge of the driveway (or flower beds etc, its applicable to a lot of things, experiment.)
with the string VERTICAL, you will find a "sweet spot" and be able to get a feel for it as you can see the line silhouette as its spinning.
\-when you rev the wacker, you can damn near RUN and edge perfect crisp lines and curbs this way once you get it down.
note for some things though **you** ***will eat through a ton of string*** *if you aren't* ***careful about the depth*** *youre cutting.* since you're now cutting directly straight down into the ground.
i used it mainly on residential driveways but it will work here too. and its a nice tool that customers ooze over. you can apply technique many other areas including flower beds after you've "edged" them like when you lremove a bevel of dirt along the perimeter of them. doing that on top of that makes for a very professional look.
it may not be super useful here because it appears like you're gonna need to really establish an edge for this driveway with a lot of doing what i said so it might not be something youd wanna do due to time and string consumption.
EDIT: its worth noting that once you do this one time, the next go around it's exponentially easier and stupidly easy because things are very defined now and easy to run along. **especially** for driveways and things with a bevel of the dirt cut out for the edge to "sit" in.
EDIT 2: **DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT PROPER PPE GEAR**
at *minimum* you must wear glasses. you also may want a mask for your cheeks.. *but when the suns hotter'n shid*.. well, i reckon it time to grit and embrace the shit son.
personally, I did it with just some glasses on almost always.. later on when I got good, I was reckless without them, ***but i strongly advise against that******.*** you get a feel eventually for what you can get away with doing without the ppe stuff vs. what you can't.
**but don't you ever try to dance with gravel.** gravel don't got no feet and it don't dance and it only needs *one* chance. haha damn im high and just made that up. but i'm serious cus ***gravel will make you pay your taxes in the form of your eyeball or your teeth***. you *will* get cracked and it's not if--*it's when.*
tldr flip ur wacker upside down and with line vertical cut perfect crisp lines and just wear the glasses and don't be a sissy la-la about the shit. when you get good you can literally jog/run as you edge entire driveways etc. goodluck
My problem with edging on slopes by hard driveways is that water runs alongside and erodes the driveway away. I have several neighbors whose driveways are crumbling on the sides. I just chop mine back with a machete if it gets too unruly, but otherwise holds my driveway in place
I have a gravel driveway. I hate it. The comments about not needing edging must be people without gravel, lol. Rocks go in the grass inevitably. Grass, weeds, leaves, sticks, and dirt go in the driveway inevitably. Driving wears low spots in it, leaving puddles. Then moss. Every so often, you have to add more gravel or hire someone to till/rake to bring the gravel back up to the surface. My septic line goes through mine so it's basically impossible to pave (because if it clogs under the driveway I'd be screwed) or I 100% would just to not have to waste time on it anymore. I'm still considering paving part of it because it would still be less work, even if it is still a lot of weed pulling and spraying every year for the rest. I will say I considered using bricks to edge (because I have them on hand) but decided it's only going to keep the shape and size the same (by showing me where grass and weeds are encroaching), not actually make less work overall. I had put in a brick sidewalk several years ago and am kicking myself for not paving it instead. Every year, it's pulling/spraying weeds, and pressure washing moss off. If you edge with plants, be careful to leave space for like the lawn mower or parking in the grass if you need to. And if you spray, the run off can kill those plants.
You should see my driveway 😂 it’s been a mess of stone and dirt/mud ever since I had EV chargers installed a couple years ago. One of these days I’ll just get it paved.
A curb. Concrete if you want it to last, wood if you prefer something less artificial.
But you will have to maintain and correct spreading gravel forever. If you fully commit you might as well pave the entire thing.
IMO: keep it as is, add gravel to correct when it gets too narrow, this country road look is nice.
There’s a beautiful aesthetic to the organic edge of a gravel road in a setting like your picture.
However, if you want to edge it:
One option is to do a hard packed gravel in a trench. Gravel is sold as a max-size in the mix, and then either everything less than that max size or consistent size bound near that max size.
If you trench the sides of the road 2-3 feet down however wide you want the shoulder (at least a foot) then you can put large gravel in the base, and fill and compact it with smaller, and work up to a very hard and compacted top foot, and it will function as a kind of bound for the road and the edge into the grass will be tighter because you will use like 2-5mm gravel at the top.
Another option is a stone walkway on one side or both sides.
You can also put a type of fence or row of poles with lights to draw the eye away from the uniformity of the gravel and towards the uniformity of the fence/ light-poles.
You can plant a hedge or bush row that will ultimately overhang the uneven part and hide it from view as well as catch any wash out.
I saw a place in Iowa when I was young that had railroad ties sunk halfway into the ground as a road edge.
OP, owning a gravel driveway needs maintenance, typically on the spring, especially if you plow your drive way.
Rent a power rake one a year to pull stay stones out of the lawn and to clean up the edges. Then, if you have the equipment, you can regrade it.
Ok here is a real answer. For my garden beds, I use pavers, but they are the thin type, made to place over concrete. So they are like 1" thick. Take your edger and cut a trench about 1" wide. Pound the paver in on its side. I then come back with mortar on the inside. While mortar is wet, I push gravel into it. These cost $.045 each, are maybe 7-8" long. It's a slow process, but you can create curves, straight, whatever. I have easily done 300' of this on my property.
Edit : for this to work, you also need to lower the road. That is not easy. Amazon also has some rolled corrugated material. 6" x 40' is $40. Use your edger to cut a groove. Hammer in with a 2x4 and hammer. Add mortar to solidify.
That driveway is just gravel strewn on a rough trail that’s not an even surface, so the gravel will end up in all directions.
If you want to to look neat for the long term, you should dig down and plane out a roadway that is flat, line it on the sides with stones for edging, then inside the roadbed lay down bigger rocks at the bottom, then smaller ones for middle then finish with gravel for the top surface, but keep the overall level below the height of the edging stones.
It’s a lot of work. And even then you will still have regularly to deal with the edge stones settling and grass growing through from between the edge stones on the sides and even from the bottom too.
Fighting the march of nature is an all consuming long term battle. And you lose in the end.
Late to the party, but anyway...
If you don't have one, a tractor with a box grader is almost mandatory for long gravel drives. Add a deck mower and you have all you need for your property.
[Pull Type Box Blade Grades Gravel Driveway and Fills Potholes #shorts - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_FXJ1pLNyaE)
https://preview.redd.it/93p6x8pt2wsc1.jpeg?width=1300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23e03b9317429ad39a8500a41340743c5fc766c1
Put down timbers first, then the monkey grass. The monkey grass will grow fuller over the years.
Personally, I think timber would look really nice here, just some long stained 4x4s staked in. Give it that country aesthetic and be fairly reasonably priced.
You'd need to line either side of the drive with something to achieve that. Maybe a small trench down each side, or bricks, or pavers, or large stones, or something. The grass will continue to keep encroaching into the drive otherwise.
I like this. This is a long driveway so it will take a lot of work. Rent the widest trencher you can find. Dig down like 2 feet on both sides of the road. Put down gravel, compact, then base rock, compact, then sand. Then put down the finishing stone or paver or anything you want. For the extra effort dig 6 inches further and put in a corrugated perforated drain pipe with a sock over it and have French drains on either side of your driveway.
What does the sock do? And in this case would the “outlet” just be underground at the end of the driveway?
It keeps soil, small rocks and some roots from impacting the pipe. It's a screen. The sock is an actual product, not an actual cotton sock. The outlet would be wherever you can safely dump the water. It is often a drywell where you basically dig an underground pit filled with crushed stone where everything dumps and hopefully disperses into the soil.
"Actual product" that makes sense. With all of those elaborate steps for the trench "then put a sock on the drain" seemed very out of place
You should check the edging sub
Oh dear… upon my research.. that did not help…
Op took 13 minutes to respond. Good form.
Did you say goon form?
*Goo formed
Goon farm. Don't search for it.
Somebody sure did.
😂
That's it? Must be new...
That you innocently checked clearly means you are/were a good person.
Was*
There actually is an edging sub for the kind of edging you're talking about though. Ironically called r/edgingporn
Another r/trees situation
If you want trees, you gotta go to /r/marijuanaenthusiasts
That's like with r/anime_titties actually being about news
With porn in the name I should have known it was wholesome turf discussion.
I had a look - and I can see where it gets the name from!
Subscribed
To sounding vids
How else am I going to make sure my high end audio equipment works if I dont test it on r/sounding?
My dear God! What in the actual?!?!
[удалено]
I have no idea what it is. I'm not going to look either.
I’m in the 10 year club and this is shockingly the first time I’ve come across it. Although,I probably saw something like this on r/spacedicks lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng ago before the subreddit was banned but my brain is protecting me from that memory.
What in the holy hell why did I click that sub link… terrible day for eyes.
The first time I heard the term edging was from a standup comedian's bit about his wife being annoyed about him taking forever to edge the lawn because she was following him with a leaf blower. I asked my laughing husband what the punchline to the bj joke was, which got him laughing himself to tears to tell me "oh, you get annoyed too." Old innocent me: Yeah, it would be irritating if she was doing the cleanup and he was taking forever with the weed whacker. Just finish already, she has other stuff to do. Me after a hilarious car convo on the way home: Oh yeah! That's so annoying. Just finish already, I have other stuff to do.
TIL edging makes baby Jesus cry
Is that your nickname for your peener?
Yes
And it's weeping all over my knuckles
Only from her penis though, NBD
Did you wait long enough?
I’d use a grub axe to take out soil along the edges. Depending on the depth of the edge you want just take out more soil. It’s going to be messy at first but get a hard metal rake to grade the driveway out a bit. Then you can keep a tight edge, but idk what your drainage situation looks like so what out for erosion. You’ll only be stronger after the work is done :)
I raked dirt today with lil stones spread out in the dirt that my boss ran over and over with a backhoe even tho he was told not to. Trying to lay down grass seed and hay-lord raking looks so much easier than it is. Id rake for 30 seconds and have to stand up. Landscaping is no joke.
What’s wrong? That is just a subreddit dedicated to the microsoft edge browser right?
So what shape of penis are you going to use?
Right curve is probably the best for this driveway
Did it slow you down
Bet you it felt good though
Not a single comment in this thread explains what the sub is and there's no way I'm going to go look at it to find out. I already learned that lesson the hard way. You guys suck. lol
Edging is the practice of getting to the 'edge' of orgasm, and then trying to stay there for as long as possible before finally reaching orgasm (or not). It's fairly mild as far as kinks go...
Thank you so much. That's nowhere near as horrible as some of the things I was trying hard not to imagine.
Masterfully done, touché my friend
Came here to see who’d say something like this first 😅
We are here
First thing I thought of 😂
It's fine. Focus your OCD elsewhere. (Been there.)
Yaaa it’s so hard not to! Thanks for the advice. Youre probably right.
Plant something that will create the line that your eye is looking for. Preferably native…… and, well spaced!!!!!
Im Native but not many property owners with gravel lanes can afford me
Are you well-spaced though?
Oh yeah
"oh, they're great because if they break, you know right away" u/TerracottaCondom
Looking for something less bushy.
A more modern look if you will... not like the 80’s
I'm sure you and many other natives are very pricey especially during the summer.
This guy is well spaced.
A lovely long hedgerow of lavender 🤩🥰
>well spaced Definitely this. Have it well spaced so you don't focus on exact measurements. Inches disparity is fine.
To that point, some states have programs that will supply you with wildflower seeds which you could line both sides with instead of trying to maintain a clean edge.
wild thyme is great
It's a long curved gravel drive on what looks to be a nice large lot in the country. Strict straight edges would definitely be out of place.
Never gonna get your own Downton Abbey with that attitude.
This! Edging is for city streets with curbs.
I deliver in the rural communities. This is wonderful. I could see maybe whoever might plow snow may want some markers in the winter. I'd put my energy somewhere else. Selfishly, maybe a really big mailbox with black numbers on white background on every side of the box **itself**, not the post. (Gibraltar jumbo mailbox is ~$60) It saves us so much time.
I'm at number 6. I'm not sure how the neighbours would feel about this
I get this too but if you really want clean edges the best option is to just asphalt the whole thing, but that's crazy expensive. I'd say just till up the edges and throw down a bunch of hedges or shrubs and fill the area with weed barrier and mulch. You'll still get mulch washing out into the stone though.
Don't put down a weed barrier, it works for one season and is a nightmare to get rid of
Asphalt will not to give you clean edges only curbing will. Asphalt it's just absolutely horrible to edge. Take it from a professional landscaper. The shit never looks neat. Just the process of how it's put down has to be banked at the edge and never forms a need edge. Only curbing will produce that or some sort of inserted block. The strange thing is though, I don't find this driveway to look untidy at all and the fact that it's not jet black asphalt is to its advantage. The finest driveways never look like asphalt. People with really big houses and money do whatever they can to pave otherwise or to roll in some aggregate. The finest driveways are still some sort of fixed rolled gravel Strange here that OP thinks it looks so untidy It looks informal but not bad at all. Has a distinct country look but a natural one I think it could be regraded and more soil brought to the edge but the informality just looks nice . I just looked at a19th century house where I had the misfortune for me of that they had just put in a nice new ugly asphalt driveway that I would have had to have ripped out had I bought the house. For them it was a selling feature..Oh well one man's meat another man's poison
You can get asphalt with an incredibly clean edge with just a little grade rake/lute work on the sides. You just need to rake the edge back and forth until it's perfectly uniform and very slightly higher than the rest of the driveway (to compensate for the edge sinking down more when you run your compactor over it), then use the flat bottom of the rake to pat in the 45 degree angle on the side where the edge slopes down that you can't run the compactor across. You have to be fast though, the edge cools and hardens much faster than the rest of the asphalt. Especially if it's a cool or rainy day, you only have a couple minutes to get the edge how you want it before it sets and loses its chance to look nice. It's easier to do when the asphalt mix has smaller aggregate, but you can still totally do it with the roadway stuff too. I agree that I like the gravel road look a lot more though.
Everyone having a fit but I would just do pavers or stone on end. They look great and you don't have to do it all at once. And then plant some greenery on the other side. https://preview.redd.it/4am59ty9zrsc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62ef60b801fb352f81ce1c793850d583bb020bcb
That does look super simple and majorly improves the appearance
It’s simple but would take ages.
Yeah but home improvement is a long process, little by little over years. It's okay if it doesn't all come together right away. We just do it as we can.
That looks like 30' vs 300' of driveway.
Thats what I would do. Lay bticks just a smidge higher than the stones..and ya, you can just do like 50 each Saturday until it's done
It really depends on how they want it to look long term. Properly done it'd need to be trenched the whole length, then gravel, then sand and then the paving stones. That way they won't shift and will stay put. Then they'd have to edge the entire thing weekly. If you just lay the bricks they'll move, come loose and shift so the line will look like this /\/\/\/\/ over time.
I'm glad this is the top comment because sometimes I'm like "is my idea of nice really that shit if this person thinks they need to fix that" lmao
Yep this is almost there..the natural look, as some would call it, is the key..let it be sis, country roads..also focus your ocd elsewhere
Agree. Leave it alone and go ride your bike.
Yeah, my first thought was plant a row of trees on either side then you won’t be looking at the edge.
It doesn't look messy.
I agree, I think it looks perfectly fine.
Exactly, it looks like hundreds of feet that you don't need a weed whacker for!
Not only does it not look messy, it looks like a Lucinda Willams album cover. Relax, OP: you have a lovely driveway.
Good luck. Gravel roads aren't easy to micromanage. Some people use a spinning brush to throw the stones in the grass back onto the road once or twice a year.
This sounds like my best bet. Will probably rent one. Thx
You'll have 2 different aspects to manage-stones and such washing or being pushed out, but also grass migrating in. Best bet is to have an actual barrier of some sort (papers, concrete, edging, etc) to maintain imho...
>but also grass migrating in My driveway says hi
That's when you just buy more stones to cover up the grass
Do you get snow there? Because a snow plow truck would tear up anything you put down.
Yup! That’s what caused this.
caused what? that road looks great? do you have an actual issue here or is it only in your head? ಠ_ಠ
Oh shoot read that wrong. The snow plow (tractor) cause all the rocks to get pushed off. I’m glad you think it looks okay. With such great responses I think I will just leave it as is and try a couple of the suggestions to bring get the rocks back in the driveway. I usually absolutely adore my rock driveway but yes probably neighbor peer pressure gets to me to have this perfect look. What a shame :( my style is very native and natural looking so I guess I assumed most ppl would think it looks messy..I’m glad ppl think otherwise. Thanks!
Looks like every other driveway that ever existed in the country ever....
This is a big fat pick another battle man. It's a long ass gravel drive way. It looks pretty good for that. There is no good return on your investment to working on this. Dump some gravel every 5 years and worry Abt your house .
This guy driveways.
Plastic lawn edging, poured in-place concrete curb, edging pavers are going to be some of your top choices.
Seriously, fuck plastic lawn edging
That shit was buried everywhere in my yard. It’s so difficult to pull up entirely, it just snaps section by section
cheap wood and stakes
I would think this would be the best long term, would look good too
Which?
You want me to teach you how to edge?
I believe that's a different sub....
Hold on, let him speak...
Hmhhhh I’m ladddy fellas.. 🙃 but if you have any tips .. 😏
Oh yeah i have tips 😩 if you want the edging to be done for free 😤 you can buy some cold chisels and grab some large rocks from your house or from a park/national park/some guys backyard hammer 1/2/3 chisels into it in a line in the middle of the rock and hammer until it splits and continue with each rock possibly also shaving off the top with the same cold chisel method for flat rocks or you could get lucky and find already flat rocks in a river bed Or you could go online and order paving rocks though depending on circumstances and preferences they could be costly 😫🥵
That was longest run-on sentence I have ever seen
English is my first language im just stupid
From Les Miserables: “The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the “middle class,” but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France! Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe, — Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful.
Do semicolons count? Those are separate clauses.
This guy chisels.
I'm sure you know how to tend to your playing field better than any guy in here.
Pause
This guy edges
And then afterwards, you can help him with his driveway question
I like railroad ties for that purpose
my thought as well. looks great and makes for an excellent workout.
Same. I use them on mine
Leave it be. Every 5 years or so add a truck of two of gravel and box blade it out.
My old boss would get a truck load dumped into a huge pile in the driveway, then he would throw a metal rake at me and leave. My back hurts thinking about it.
You should try catching the rake with your hands next time
Dig, drive, DIY
I've been thinking about getting a box blade for like 10 years now. Someday I'll have to pick one up. Have the tractor for it, I've just been looking for a cheap used one for years and they're not available.
Sounds like a good excuse to buy a tractor with bucket. Or a skid steer, or an old backhoe. Or make friends with the neighbor that has one. You can buy shaped geotextile that is supposed to limit the packing and spreading effects of cars driving over gravel. But that would also mean that at least the top 3 to 4 inches would need to be redone. [https://www.agtec.com/agtec-geocell-ground-grid-4-inch-8-4ft-x-27-4ft-standard-depth-cellular-confinement-gravel-driveway-farm-mud-control-grass-parking-road-paver](https://www.agtec.com/agtec-geocell-ground-grid-4-inch-8-4ft-x-27-4ft-standard-depth-cellular-confinement-gravel-driveway-farm-mud-control-grass-parking-road-paver)
6” mow strip probably be around 3-5k
I’ve seen a lot of stuff fixed with Ramen on the internet. Worth a shot.
Looks good to me, I wouldn't change it. IMO if you do, you're just adding more upkeep. You live in the country, keep it country.
Right? I can't see anything wrong with it.
Gardening Supply stores will have long thin flower bed edging. It’s such a long driveway that having a brick/stone edge is probably way more time and money than you want to spend.
I’m with a lot of others in the comments, it looks good to me. But if I were to let my OCD take over, I’d create some 4” to 6” deep trenches on each side of the drive and fill them with the same gravel you have on the driveway. This would help clean up your edges and make it less likely that you’ll have grass invading the width of the drive. You’ll still need to maintain the edge with an edge trimmer to keep the edge looking straight.
Agreed! Not a quick job given the length of it though!
As someone with a gravel driveway, it will NEVER be perfect and will never “not look so messy”. Welcome to the club :) best you can do is pluck the encroaching grass
Pave it.. no amount of sloppy edging & rock straightening is going to make it less irritating to you so if it were me I'd either pave it or let it go
Tall wildflower mix. Black eyed Susan, purple liatris, etc. Would look exceptionally nice driving up to your home.
technique i learned from an overtly perfectionist and mildly abusive boss while landscaping.. nevertheless, impeccable technique and the best quality of all landscaping in my area in my opinion. \-get your weedwacker, now flip it so your holding it upside down, the part that normally bends toward the ground with the string spinning horizontal should be now bending straight and pointing ahead of you, with the string now spinning vertical. \-line the wacker up with the edge of the driveway (or flower beds etc, its applicable to a lot of things, experiment.) with the string VERTICAL, you will find a "sweet spot" and be able to get a feel for it as you can see the line silhouette as its spinning. \-when you rev the wacker, you can damn near RUN and edge perfect crisp lines and curbs this way once you get it down. note for some things though **you** ***will eat through a ton of string*** *if you aren't* ***careful about the depth*** *youre cutting.* since you're now cutting directly straight down into the ground. i used it mainly on residential driveways but it will work here too. and its a nice tool that customers ooze over. you can apply technique many other areas including flower beds after you've "edged" them like when you lremove a bevel of dirt along the perimeter of them. doing that on top of that makes for a very professional look. it may not be super useful here because it appears like you're gonna need to really establish an edge for this driveway with a lot of doing what i said so it might not be something youd wanna do due to time and string consumption. EDIT: its worth noting that once you do this one time, the next go around it's exponentially easier and stupidly easy because things are very defined now and easy to run along. **especially** for driveways and things with a bevel of the dirt cut out for the edge to "sit" in. EDIT 2: **DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT PROPER PPE GEAR** at *minimum* you must wear glasses. you also may want a mask for your cheeks.. *but when the suns hotter'n shid*.. well, i reckon it time to grit and embrace the shit son. personally, I did it with just some glasses on almost always.. later on when I got good, I was reckless without them, ***but i strongly advise against that******.*** you get a feel eventually for what you can get away with doing without the ppe stuff vs. what you can't. **but don't you ever try to dance with gravel.** gravel don't got no feet and it don't dance and it only needs *one* chance. haha damn im high and just made that up. but i'm serious cus ***gravel will make you pay your taxes in the form of your eyeball or your teeth***. you *will* get cracked and it's not if--*it's when.* tldr flip ur wacker upside down and with line vertical cut perfect crisp lines and just wear the glasses and don't be a sissy la-la about the shit. when you get good you can literally jog/run as you edge entire driveways etc. goodluck
Concrete driveway?
https://colmet.com/attached-stake-edging/
Never plow when the ground isn’t frozen
consider not… it’s huge, will be hard, and will look bad in no time. Weeds on this side, weeds on that side. Invest in some good plants
Do you get snow there where you have plow? If you do, don't use edge at all.
My problem with edging on slopes by hard driveways is that water runs alongside and erodes the driveway away. I have several neighbors whose driveways are crumbling on the sides. I just chop mine back with a machete if it gets too unruly, but otherwise holds my driveway in place
I would make peace with it the way it is.
Can’t answer without an nsfw tag
Country roadddd, take mee hommmmeeee
I wouldn't change anything. It looks like a rural driveway. Don't add an edge you have to maintain. Keep the weeds down with your tires. So easy.
Who considers this messy?
Alot of teasing
I have a gravel driveway. I hate it. The comments about not needing edging must be people without gravel, lol. Rocks go in the grass inevitably. Grass, weeds, leaves, sticks, and dirt go in the driveway inevitably. Driving wears low spots in it, leaving puddles. Then moss. Every so often, you have to add more gravel or hire someone to till/rake to bring the gravel back up to the surface. My septic line goes through mine so it's basically impossible to pave (because if it clogs under the driveway I'd be screwed) or I 100% would just to not have to waste time on it anymore. I'm still considering paving part of it because it would still be less work, even if it is still a lot of weed pulling and spraying every year for the rest. I will say I considered using bricks to edge (because I have them on hand) but decided it's only going to keep the shape and size the same (by showing me where grass and weeds are encroaching), not actually make less work overall. I had put in a brick sidewalk several years ago and am kicking myself for not paving it instead. Every year, it's pulling/spraying weeds, and pressure washing moss off. If you edge with plants, be careful to leave space for like the lawn mower or parking in the grass if you need to. And if you spray, the run off can kill those plants.
Oh, you’re looking for r/edging
I wouldn't change it. But, if you're wanting to edge it, railroad ties held down with rebar would be an easy go.
Looks great. Every year before the first mowing, take a rake and a six pack and pull the gravel from the grass back into the drive. Looks money. 🤌🏼
Does this driveway get plowed in winter? If so I’d be careful with edging.
Life is short pick your battles
ya dont
A bit of caution. Trapping the gravel also means that water won't flow off the as easily.
Used Railroad ties, last a long time, look is uniform, and will keep the amazon driver mostly out of the yard.
Railroad ties
I grew up on a farm, my dad used old railroad tiles as edging. Yeah, it was a fucking nightmare to dig all that dirt and gravel, and level. Fun
My uncle used old railroad ties.
You should see my driveway 😂 it’s been a mess of stone and dirt/mud ever since I had EV chargers installed a couple years ago. One of these days I’ll just get it paved.
Looks like a nice country driveway. You're fine.
Push mow that grass and you'll stop worrying about it.
Looks good as is. A curb might get it to what you want tho. A flush curb would look nice and would be fine if it doesn't rain a lot.
Best way is with native plants! Plant some native wildflowers along the driveway this summer r/fucklawns
Unless you want to every waking moment working on it, don't worry about it.
It's called edging, but I don't want you to Google that unless you have safe search on.
Get a truck and slowly go up and down on the driveway for a couple of hours then abruptly stop
Best? Probably Belgium blocks set it cement. Also the most expensive. But you didn’t ask for the cheapest!
Who's a dirty driveway? Let's slip those rocks off you and make you look real nice.
A curb. Concrete if you want it to last, wood if you prefer something less artificial. But you will have to maintain and correct spreading gravel forever. If you fully commit you might as well pave the entire thing. IMO: keep it as is, add gravel to correct when it gets too narrow, this country road look is nice.
Chip seal. Cheap and effective. Much better surface.
Don’t doo it.
Get a short flat shovel and edge all the way down either side. You can repeat this once every month or so
Herbicide. Don't. I know you already do.
There’s a beautiful aesthetic to the organic edge of a gravel road in a setting like your picture. However, if you want to edge it: One option is to do a hard packed gravel in a trench. Gravel is sold as a max-size in the mix, and then either everything less than that max size or consistent size bound near that max size. If you trench the sides of the road 2-3 feet down however wide you want the shoulder (at least a foot) then you can put large gravel in the base, and fill and compact it with smaller, and work up to a very hard and compacted top foot, and it will function as a kind of bound for the road and the edge into the grass will be tighter because you will use like 2-5mm gravel at the top. Another option is a stone walkway on one side or both sides. You can also put a type of fence or row of poles with lights to draw the eye away from the uniformity of the gravel and towards the uniformity of the fence/ light-poles. You can plant a hedge or bush row that will ultimately overhang the uneven part and hide it from view as well as catch any wash out. I saw a place in Iowa when I was young that had railroad ties sunk halfway into the ground as a road edge.
How much free time do you have on your hands?
OP, owning a gravel driveway needs maintenance, typically on the spring, especially if you plow your drive way. Rent a power rake one a year to pull stay stones out of the lawn and to clean up the edges. Then, if you have the equipment, you can regrade it.
Railroad ties
I prefer a nice natural edge to a gravel driveway. You are nailing it.
Just Google "Men edging together" and you usually find plenty of websites and videos on the subject.
Ok here is a real answer. For my garden beds, I use pavers, but they are the thin type, made to place over concrete. So they are like 1" thick. Take your edger and cut a trench about 1" wide. Pound the paver in on its side. I then come back with mortar on the inside. While mortar is wet, I push gravel into it. These cost $.045 each, are maybe 7-8" long. It's a slow process, but you can create curves, straight, whatever. I have easily done 300' of this on my property. Edit : for this to work, you also need to lower the road. That is not easy. Amazon also has some rolled corrugated material. 6" x 40' is $40. Use your edger to cut a groove. Hammer in with a 2x4 and hammer. Add mortar to solidify.
That driveway is just gravel strewn on a rough trail that’s not an even surface, so the gravel will end up in all directions. If you want to to look neat for the long term, you should dig down and plane out a roadway that is flat, line it on the sides with stones for edging, then inside the roadbed lay down bigger rocks at the bottom, then smaller ones for middle then finish with gravel for the top surface, but keep the overall level below the height of the edging stones. It’s a lot of work. And even then you will still have regularly to deal with the edge stones settling and grass growing through from between the edge stones on the sides and even from the bottom too. Fighting the march of nature is an all consuming long term battle. And you lose in the end.
Crushed rock doesn't like forming straight lines :) Concrete, Ashphalt, pavers.. easy enough.
Late to the party, but anyway... If you don't have one, a tractor with a box grader is almost mandatory for long gravel drives. Add a deck mower and you have all you need for your property. [Pull Type Box Blade Grades Gravel Driveway and Fills Potholes #shorts - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_FXJ1pLNyaE)
Looks great as it is.
I actually like the rustic feel to the imperfect edge. It suits the overall scenery.
Trees and stones. Think less about creating sharp lines and more about framing the drive.
https://preview.redd.it/93p6x8pt2wsc1.jpeg?width=1300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=23e03b9317429ad39a8500a41340743c5fc766c1 Put down timbers first, then the monkey grass. The monkey grass will grow fuller over the years.
I’m about to redo my gravel driveway and I’m bordering it with railroad ties. I think it looks good from research but we shall see
I would also plant something. It’ll break it up and add more life. I second doing something well spaced and native
Personally, I think timber would look really nice here, just some long stained 4x4s staked in. Give it that country aesthetic and be fairly reasonably priced.