The growing problem of concrete gardens
| Published: 1st April 2008 10:36 |
The picture-perfect English front garden with a white picket fence and planted borders is fast becoming a thing of the past. Looking around urban and suburban front gardens you will notice that front gardens have become nothing more than car parking spaces.
The Concrete Garden
To date, millions of Britons have concreted over their gardens. In the North-East, nearly half of all front gardens are at least three-quarters concrete.
With something like nine in 10 households owning a car and four in 10 owning two or more cars, coupled with widespread residential parking restrictions, the parking issue has been solved by paving over turf and digging up flower beds. Though this solves one problem, it causes worrying others, warn environmentalists.
The cost of paving over a garden to make a driveway amounts to an average £1,300 and as much as £3,000. This cost is a justifiable one for homeowners that experience trouble parking outside their own house or paying something like £450 a year for the privilege if they live in a restricted parking zone. More tempting still is the fact that property with off-road parking may sell for up to £10,000 more than neighbouring property with no off-street parking, according to estate agents.
While the lack of parking space is the most common reason for concrete front gardens, one in 10 homeowners admit that they're not green-fingered and don't want a front garden easy to maintain.
Anne Lewis from the environment agency is just one environmentalist concerned with the rise in concrete gardens.
"You're limiting the way that birds can get to worms in the soil, there's nothing for the hedgehogs," warns Lewis. "Concrete is just a complete dead loss, whereas gardens can be very valuable wildlife habitats."
More research into their environmental impact raises an issue of rising urban temperatures, believe it or not. Mayor of London Ken Livingston believes this is a major cause for concern in the capital.
"It's really bad news. The more concrete, the hotter the city gets. All this concrete retains the heat and feeds it back," says Livingstone.
"Over the next 20 years, we've actually got to get many more trees, much more grass, much less concrete, much less brickwork. If it does carry on like this, you'll eventually have legislation that stops people doing it."
The problem of heat-retentive floor surfaces is cumulative. Front driveway surfaces like concrete slabs and decorative brick paving store heat during the day and release that heat after sundown. With more and more driveways acting like radiators, the air temperature rises. That might sound like a good idea, but environmentalists warn this contributes to poorer air quality.
Flooding is also a huge problem for largely paved urban areas. Though the rainwater runs off the driveway leaving houses dry, excessive rainwater runs directly into the drainage system. With more water running in, the more likely they are to insufficiently cope with the water volume, leading to localised flooded roads. Even if the water does run away freely, the water that should have been absorbed into the soil of front gardens is displaced into rivers, often laced with engine oil, herbicides and other polluting substances from the streets. Environmentalists warn this can lead to increased water pollution and death of wildlife when drains overflow.
While the cost of installing a driveway is justifiable, the environmental cost it seems could be much higher in the long run.
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