Tree friendly driveway surface

[Admiral Beez]

I'd like to change my driveway to something friendlier for the trees. Currently it's all paving bricks so quite a lot of water seeps through the mortar to the roots and water table and not to the sewers, but I think I can do better. I've seen bricks with grass in between, but these in my area seem to just be filled with weeds, and certainly not as nice as this...

 

[W. K. Lis]

The problem remains that we cannot use herbicides to control weeds. One has to pluck them out, or use an artificial turf that still allows the water to flow through.

You could always smuggle herbicides in from another province, or from the States.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Indeed, a product like this would do the trick http://www.ortho.com/smg/goprod/ort...6;jsessionid=D3A26D99E1846F1BD9561BAEF9A7CBDF

 

[vic]

The Whole Foods at Square One has permeable brick paving in the driveways around it. Can't see it clearly on Streetview (https://goo.gl/maps/jdoB0) but it looks pretty much like these bricks:

It ends up looking pretty good, and without the huge grassy divots that may get weedy, mucky, etc...

I expect that whatever is placed underneath the bricks has a major impact on how well it drains through, and whether weeds end up growing in the cracks. I expect if it's installed well, and if the cracks don't fill up with debris too quickly, then weeds would be a minimal problem.

Here's a Toronto example of what you originally posted: https://goo.gl/maps/vtHIA I don't think it looks as good, and not so great for walking or biking over.

Oh... another one I saw once: Crown St. in Vancouver. I can't find a decent photo, put the image on Page 3 in this PDF (http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/resourcecentre/readingroom/conference/conf2005/docs/s5/kauffman.pdf) shows how it works. It's a much higher grass-to-paving ratio...can look quite nice if grass grows well in there. Probably drawbacks of wetness/mud etc. on rainy days though (I'm guessing).