The short answer: it depends on your end goal.

On the plus side: manufacturers claim that landscape fabric can save on resources, whether that’s water spent on plants, money spent on renewing gravel surfaces, or time spent fixing potholes.

However, landscape fabric might be overkill for larger applications like gravel driveways unless the soil needs reinforcement. It’s also a questionable and potentially irksome solution for long-term weed suppression.

To help you decide whether or not to use landscape fabric, we’ll cover the basics of what landscape fabric is and where it can be used, which varieties are available, and the advantages and disadvantages of using landscape fabric. Then you can decide for yourself if it meets your project needs.

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Over the years, a few customers have asked us about the wisdom of using gravel grids. We did a deep dive into this topic, examining options on the Internet, calling dealers and supply yards, and comparing product data. We ended up with so much information that we decided to split our findings into three blog posts:

Let’s start with the basics.

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Daniel Burnstein of Brooklyn, New York had a unique dilemma: his client wanted to be able to use the backyard with a wheelchair. Concrete work and pavers can be expensive, and Daniel liked the rustic charm of gravel.

His question: Can gravel surfaces be wheelchair accessible? The answer is yes—if they meet certain standards.

Washington Rock, with the help of landscape architect Clayton Beaudoin, researched the topic and came up with guidelines for making gravel surfaces wheelchair accessible.

Our goal is to make these guidelines as easy as possible to follow, so we created a simple guide below. Then we included additional resources, such as a Glossary of Terms and Research Notes.

Check out the companion piece to this article, “Designing for Diana: How We Made Gravel Wheelchair-Accessible in Brooklyn,” to read about how we used our guidelines to help Daniel create a gravel-accessible backyard. The project is summarized in the video below.

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