Being a Rake-y Master in the garden looks easy when you see a professional Irishman on the job, but it’s a gravely serious task
The secret to lush, flowing gravel that wows and pleases is to start with natural, smooth gravel, and then to give it a regular raking.
In the good old days, gravel areas were raked 2 to 4 times a month, and those guys didn’t need gym memberships or rowing machines in the garage.
“John Lord says” is all we need to say, really, what would we realistically add? He gets to the heart of gravel maintenance, evening out those bumps and wrinkles, some of which arise from the action of water, soil life, burrowing critters, roots, and so on, who cares, it needs sorting.
John Lord’s 3 minute online gravel raking course, below, is completely free on Youtube, and if you like, share, and subscribe to his channel that’s awfully kind:
Sod Raking for a Game of Soldiers
That’s right, raking is a pain. Life has enough of that for everyone without the driveway chipping in as well.
You can go a whole different way with gravel by binding it in place. You could do this the “proper way” with resin:
Then there is the “medium rare way”, laying the gravel coated in PVA from the start (note that he is using sharp rock chipping gravel, not smooth natural gravel, which is what you want for a loose gravel area that gets raked):
Or the “YOLO let’s go way” with a yearly application of PVA glue: