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If you walk along your street I can virtually guarantee that nearly all the front gardens you see will contain one of four uninspiring materials. Tarmac, grey concrete, brick paviors, or pea shingle probably account for 95% of the driveways in this country & are an indication of the lack of imagination that infests the use of materials in British gardens with the new millennium dawning. Although there are reasons for the popularity of these materials, they all have large question marks against their suitability.
Tarmac is easily damaged & difficult to repair, grey concrete is bland & easily stained, brick paviors say 'petrol forecourt' in no uncertain terms, & pea shingle follows you everywhere throughout the house. There are alternatives, but they are not well known. If you want a 21st century drive, then give a thought to rubber crumb. This excellent substance uses recycled tyres to produce a surface that is durable, & is available in different textures & colours. I can be laid in any design, & is easily repaired as it can be patched. Look in Yellow Pages or search on the net for companies that use rubber crumb for children's playgrounds or industrial uses, & they can advise you further.
A more traditional material that has many saving graces is self-binding gravel. This produces a surface that is solid (when laid over a hardcore base), beautifully textured, repairable, & unlike shingle, it stays where you put it, even on a slope. The best known is Breedon gravel, which has a rich golden colour, but others are available. Your local supplier of aggregates should be able to get hold of a sample for you.
Dragging myself away from drives (which is difficult, as they are a particular bête noir for me) brings me to a more general use of materials in the wider garden. Recycling is a big buzzword in gardening at the moment, with garden reclamation suppliers springing up all over the place. Railway sleepers are very much in vogue as a good source of timber at the moment, along with scaffold planks, but as with anything reclaimed, it is unwise to order without seeing the actual pieces that will be living in your garden as quality can vary enormously. Other reclaimed materials that are worth looking at, particularly if your house is older, are paving & bricks from demolition sites. It used to be good practice to ask to have a look round these sites for interesting bits & pieces but with strict Health & Safety regulations, & people realising the potential value of these materials this is much less likely now.
If you have a wild or woodland garden, woodchips can make a cheap, sympathetic surface, but they do need to be contained between boards to stop them spreading sideways. You can get them in different shades as some companies stain them to provide a contrast. This can be quite dramatic if you already have bark mulch on your beds.
The use of metal in the garden is becoming very fashionable, with the reflective qualities of stainless steel or the green oxidation on ageing copper adding to the palette of effects available to the garden designer. In fact, it is worth bearing in mind that the 'traditional' materials that you expect to find in a garden are only there because someone decided to experiment with them in the first place. This is your cue to try any number of things that you feel would enhance your garden, but learn from my experiences, material textures can clash as much as colour, so be careful how many different textures you put together.
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