Linda Wesselink can think of no better way to spend a day than watching her grandchildren riding their bikes up and down her driveway.
This is no surprise. The driveway of the Northbrook home she shares with her husband, David, is no ordinary strip of asphalt. It’s made of attractive paver bricks. Lush plantings–a splash of yellows, purples and greens–surround its length. The drive itself curves gracefully toward the home’s front entrance. And the Wesselinks have positioned a small bench perfectly along its edge, so that they can relax while watching all the figure-eights, wheelies and hands-free acrobatics their grandchildren display.
“I love to be out there in that seating area,” Linda Wesselink said. “I feel like it’s a hidden little area. It’s almost like having another foyer, only it’s outside.”
As anyone who spends time driving through suburban neighborhoods can attest, the Wesselinks are in a minority. Most driveways are blank stretches of concrete or asphalt with little personality.
The trend toward larger garages only makes matters worse. In the 1950s, the one-car garage was standard in the 41 percent of homes that had any garage at all. More than half a century later, almost two-thirds of all new homes have two-car garages and nationwide, 19 percent have three-car or more garages, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
It makes sense, then, that the driveways leading to them are getting wider too. How, then, can homeowners make their larger-than-ever driveways fit into a home’s landscaping and not detract from curb appeal?
Sara Furlan, project director with Lake Bluff’s Mariani Landscape and a landscape architect, says the best driveways rarely call attention to themselves.
“You never want to drive by a house and say, `Wow, what a driveway,'” she said. “Basically, you want a driveway to be as functional as possible without taking away from appeal of the home. You want to make sure it complements the house.”
One approach, says Tim Thoelecke, owner of Glenview’s American Academy of Landscape Design, is to think of the driveway as part of an outdoor room or foyer.
Thoelecke designed the Wesselinks’ driveway so it feels like an enclosed space, separate from the street, thanks to the plantings around it.
When visitors pull up, Thoelecke says, they are transported from the outside street to the Wesselinks’ home not only physically but visually and mentally too.
“The curb appeal is really that whole experience of the time you drive up to the time you get into the front door,” Thoelecke said. “If you can create some enclosure or some feeling of entering before you get to the front door, it’s almost as if you have created an outdoor foyer for yourself.”
Designing the drive
Problem is, too many homeowners, especially those building large new houses, focus only on the home itself. The driveway becomes an afterthought.
“In this day and age, we are dealing a lot of times with houses that are too big for their lots,” Thoelecke said. “They’ll have three bays in their garages and the front door will sit a long way from the driveway. Homeowners need to create a transition from the driveway to the front door. It should not be an afterthought. It should instead be thought of as an extension of the house.”
When planning a driveway, you’ll want to consider the layout and design, paving materials, function and parking. Most driveways lead to the garage and family parking. But if there’s room, a driveway should lead to the house’s main entry and provide an exit for guests. You’ll also want to have room to turn around in the drive.
Design options include circular drives, parking spurs or courtyards. Thoelecke says owners who prefer extra parking spaces to a circle-shaped driveway can use structural items–such as benches or trellises–and plants to create an attractive parking court.
Choosing materials
Too many owners choose materials for their driveways that don’t match their homes’ styles, Furlan says. Some, for instance, may use antique pavers for their driveways even though their homes are thoroughly modern.
“It should all be blended together. It shouldn’t look like the driveway is here and the house is there,” Furlan said. “When you think of driveways, it’s like with flooring. The material on the floor inside the house should match the materials outside the house. There shouldn’t be a dichotomy between the inside and outside. If the exterior of the house is a particular color, you should work with something that complements it.”
One of Furlan’s favorite driveway materials isn’t asphalt, concrete or brick. It’s gravel.
A gravel drive is fairly easy to create, Furlan says. Owners first create a typical asphalt driveway, but then put a layer of gravel, coated with a thin sticky tar, on top of it as a finishing coat. Such driveways are known as tar-and-chip driveways and have been around for more than 100 years. They’re not nearly as popular today, though, as are more common concrete or asphalt drives. That means it will be harder to find a contractor able, or willing, to build a tar-and-chip drive or replace an existing drive with one.
Still, Furlan says such drives are well worth the extra effort. Not only are they visually pleasing, they also provide a satisfying crunch as cars and trucks roll upon them.
“A gravel driveway provides a great sense of entry,” Furlan said. “You can hear the crunch of gravel under the tires of the car. It’s a wonderful way to experience landscape audibly.”
There is a downside to gravel: It moves around. Owners, though, can easily rake the gravel back to an even finish when needed.
Creating landscaping
To make driveways truly attractive, homeowners must be creative in their use of plantings and decor. That’s because the key to any visually pleasing driveway design rests more with the drive’s surroundings–the plants and outdoor items around it–than with the driveway’s shape or materials.
“Landscaping around the edges is really how you minimize the effect of a driveway as seen from the street,” said Stuart Cohen, who, along with his wife, owns Evanston-based Stuart Cohen & Julie Hacker Architects. “We haven’t figured out any other magic way to make them go away.”
Gary Knickerbocker, design manager with Lake Bluff-based Scott Byron & Co., recommends that owners consider creating transition zones with their driveways, zones that transport new arrivals to a home from the outside world to the residence. Some do this by putting entry columns up at certain points in the driveway. Others create a landscaping background that serves to set the driveway off from the street.
Others do something as simple as placing a bench, perhaps in a small garden of flowers, alongside a corner of their driveway. Such a simple step, Knickerbocker says, can make a big difference in a driveway’s look and feel.
“You may never sit on that bench,” Knickerbocker said. “But the mere fact that a bench is out there implies that you could sit there. Even though you may be standing in your kitchen, you look out your window, see that bench out there maybe with a little path going to it or some small garden plantings, and it’s a very restful kind of thought. The real value of that is psychological.”
The Wesselinks, in Northbrook, can attest to that.
“We spend a lot of time outside on that bench,” Linda Wesselink said. “Before we made this change, we had a typical driveway. We never sat out by that one.”
