Growing Concerns

With increasing demand to green-up hard landscaped areas, Grass Paving and Living Walls have fast become a design option of choice for urban planners, architects and specifiers. Grass Concrete offer a range of grass paving and vertical walling products that fit today’s growing concerns for a greener hard landscape.

Grasscrete, a reinforced grass system can help permeate heavy rainfall and help address SUDs issues with obvious advantages over traditional hard paved landscapes with their increased runoff into the storm water channels.

Some grass paving systems help store rainfall within the system with low risk of ponding, until the ground can naturally re-charge is a significant benefit. This lag time is beneficial in the prevention of flooding and can be extended by introducing an underlying drainage blanket across the full extent of the paved area. The drainage blanket can be used to either attenuate permeation to the water table or be a vehicle for rainwater harvesting.

Today’s wide choice of grass paving systems means that Specifiers now have a wide choice of products. Without the clear guidelines of an industry standard it could be possible to end up with a product that might be fine in the short term, but will not stand the test of time, and in turn, not achieve any degree of sustainability. Future proofing is essential for grass paving.

For building developments emergency access roads must support the weight of the latest fire and access vehicles, with weight capacity up to 18 tonnes. In other areas think however about the potential for unplanned heavy use such as from refuse and skip vehicles.

Designers careful consideration of grass paving types, particularly when likely to be subjected to frequent traffic. A relatively thin layer plastic paver might suffice for light traffic or secondary parking but will not stand the test of time of structural design of reinforced concrete.

Good grass coverage will be essential to achieving the green vista many clients desire. Many grass paving systems rely upon grass to anchor the system in place, the depth and shape of the soil pockets therefore has a critical part to play if grass cover is to be sustained.

For both commercial and domestic car parks and driveways there are options for concrete grass reinforcement. Grass paving systems can have an increasing role in sustainable harmonised urban landscapes. They provide fantastic green areas where once just asphalt was considered.

Besides going green at ground level many designers are looking at vertical to enhance the green envelop. Grass Concrete offer the Betoconcept range of living walls provide the vertical landscapes often used where space can be a limiting factor. They provide adequate soil pockets for all types of plants, shrubs and climbers. Good drainage and water capture help keep landscape maintenance to a minimum.

Vertical landscaping can benefit both sound suppression and help get quick landscaping results across a wide walled area.

To find out more about Grass Concrete reinforced grass system click here.