Even if you didn't have the parking dilemma, the landscaping needs help. It is smothering your charming cottage. Is there an alley behind the garage? You could open the back of it and add another door so it would be a drive through for the one car and a back out for the second one behind it both if were home at the same time. That would pull both of them further from the front yard, and you could eliminate that extra pad.

Sadly there is no alley. There is no parking allowed on our street (ever) so front yard parking is the only solution. It is simply a necessity here. There are bylaws permitting this as long as folks are not parking on grass.

Does the angled car contribute to the 'smothering'?

Good ideas. #1 the angled driveway really pulls my eye in a negative way. I like how #2 is calmer and less impact. I can appreciate the house more. #3 I saw a good real life example of this but I can't find it again. The pad infront of the door works for me if there is enough room to maneuver a vehicle properly. I'm realizing I might be over angles and strong visual forces - at least for my property.

wondering how deep front yard is - what’s length of drive? Is it an option to widen driveway from the street so second car pulls straight in & parks not so close to the house? Seems like the pavers are meant to be the walkway not a parking spot. If you can widen the street end of driveway, the bonus would be increase of parking when needed occasionally. You would lose some or all grass area but should still have room for green scape closer to house. The 2 evergreens on either side closest to house have outgrown their space so I’d take them out & open things up.

I had the same thought as @KW. I would sacrifice some front yard to pull up a second car more parallel to the main driveway and leave the brick walkway as a walkway. And yes, the evergreens in front can be taken out as well.

Can you move the vehicles and take a pic without them?

What if you took out the shrubs in front and along side of your house out and put in a hedgerow to hide the parking area with the pavers? here's an example. You could trim them with a hedge clipper if you want a neater look.

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here's a better hedge photo.

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following

Maybe the second spot could be gravel and sort of rounded. So when there is no car it looks like an intentional landscape choice and not a driveway.

Video of a similar same problem and how the landscape designers solved it to accommodate some car parking in front.

https://youtu.be/7Miu9vuUuhE

Great video!

Sue54321, great solution there. I do like that idea.

territheresa, we considered the hedgerow idea - clipped hornbeam do well here.

Re removing the big evergreens. I agree they are big esp the yew on the right. The cedar is hard to say goodbye to. Its finally a nice size to light during our dark winters. The evergreen in the foreground is a 20 year old spuce (Norfolk?) Its incredibly healthy and it would be sad to loose it too. If we had a big old ol tree we would have to work around/with it. Why are the evergreens dispensable?

I'm assuming there is a car in your garage. Is the car in front of your doorway an occasional guest, or do you have three cars? In other words, is that parking spot normally empty?

The evergreen to the right is crowding your steps and blocking your window. Not a pro, but the scale and placement look wrong for your smaller yard.

I love your trees they look healthy and are interesting! Hope you keep them.

Thanks KW. Pruning the yew into a good shape and size might be a good solution. Behind the cedar against the house is boxwood edging a bed of oak leaf hydrangea and two yews. I agree there wouldn't be a blank spot. Do you have prune yews in stages if attempting a major prune or just go for it?

Sue, the gravel pad for overflow parking is actually my dream but we have no examples locally. Maybe with pots of agapanthus in the summer. It seems more like a UK solution (and I love those yards) despite global warming we still get major amounts of snow here. Maybe my concern re snow and gravel is unfounded.

Do you have enough room to the left or right of the house close to the property line to move some of the evergreens? That would give you room to open up the front and room to get the look you want because it does not look like there is enough space currently to be functional as well as to have the curbside appeal you are hoping to have. I like both ideas but to make it work and be aesthetically pleasing you might have to move the evergreens.

And perhaps consider the added sidewalk/driveway in exposed aggregate if you're worried about the gravel.

I'm not clear on the difference between exposed aggregate and gravel.

I’ve been to ski resorts in the mountains with gravel overflow parking lots. The gravel was rougher and larger sized. You’d think gravel would be good (Ex. Throw the rock salt on it, water melts and goes into the ground instead of refreezing on top).

Could just make a little 1 ft square patch of gravel as an experiment and watch it all year to see what happens.

Doug, Exposed aggregate is concrete with the top layer removed so the decorative “aggregate stones” show on the surface. Used in driveways & walkways as nicer looking finish and slip resistant. Usually costs more.

Thanks Sue. The gravel argument on ski resort parking is good. I can use that to my advantage, haha. A trial patch is smart too.

Just discovered a gravel stabilizing system used in Western Canada. I knew it was more than just a matter of pouring gravel on your drive... this is good.

Doug - thinking on your yew pruning question. Generally late winter to early spring is best time for major cutting. Especially since it sounds like you have cold winters. Yews are sturdy & forgiving so quite a bit can be cut off & it’ll survive & come back. It will regrow multiples from each cut point. Shearing, as in a hedge cut, results in very dense plant & inner plant will brown out due to lack of light. Selective cutting - reaching in to cut off longest branches, results in more open looser plant & less formal more natural looking. New growth will generate from interior of plant as light can get in. Because your Yew is a conical & dense shape, my guess is it’s been sheared, probably with hedge trimmer. I prefer a more natural shape and It’s easier to maintain. If I were reshaping & trying to reduce size of yours, I‘d do a heavy selective cutting with a goal of reducing width of bottom half then I’d get ladder out & do same at top to gradually get rid of the point. This won’t be a fast job for first go round. Find longest branch, follow it in to interior & find a point where branchlets are growing to cut. Find next longest branch etc. keep working around the middle down to bottom where it’s fattest. Since it’s sheared you might wind up just reducing bulk by opening up for light & air, then going back in couple months to cut more longer tips off after interior shows some growth. You can find lots of info on yew pruning on Google. There are many types & shapes of yews. Yours looks like “Hicks”. The ones I can’t see you said are closer to house may be short round kind. BTW, do you know Oak Leaf Hydrangeas can get quite large? 4‘ - 6’ high & wide. You said you have one of those too In that front spot. Either that spot is much larger than it looks in picture perspective, or that spot is going to be really overgrown soon. But that’s another point in favor of taking out the biggest evergreen close to drive - so the hydrangea flowers can be appreciated. That’s it for my pruning lesson,😁 Kathy

Look at Coregravel stabilization matrix. We used for patio at our last home. You can literally walk on it in stilettos.

Thanks KW for the tips on yew trimming. I will do this in a few months.

The oak leaf hydrangea are marginal here so in 10 years they have done well but have not overgrown. I prune them to shape and they always put on a tremendous display of red leaves in the fall. A good point about clearing the cedar out of the way.

I will add a better pic I just discovered.

here is a different view. ignore the lawn haha. i simply refuse to care for a lawn except to cut it. in the new design there will defiantly be no grass to clip to the required length every week. KW you can see they OL hydrangea.

Since you don't want to mess with the grass, why not simply pull out the pavers, regrade the lawn so you have proper rain runoff and buy additional ones to pave over the majority of the front yard and grass entirely? If the pavers can't be matched exactly, perhaps an interesting combination of those mixed with others could be worked into a pattern.

Thanks deco. A nice solution and pretty pic but we are leaning towards more areas for planting non-lawn options. Also, we have pretty strict bylaws for vast areas of paved yards here. Our long winters and frost render these paved drives a mess no matter how well they get installed. Aggregate and gravel options for parking are more in our picture I think. Some new permeable options that are a combination of rock and binder are also being recommended f our cold climate

Doug, what a nice house you have! The fall color of the oak leaf is stunning! I wouldn’t wait long to remove the evergreen in front of it. I can also now fully appreciate how much out of bounds the big Yew is too - needs to come back off the pavers & it’s encroaching on entry too so it really needs a major cut. I think you’ll decide whether or not it’s too much of a project to reduce its size once you get going on it. If you wind up replacing, there are many choices for “fastigiate“ narrow & slender growth evergreens. I like decoenthusiaste’s idea for pulling out lawn & adding to the pavers you have. Besides being water wise, which it sounds like you are already, the result would be a consistently nice front scape that complements your pretty house as well as the parking spot bonus. The euonymus plants you have at front edge of grass can be transplanted & would make nice contrast colored filler along the outside edge of pavers.

Didn’t see your reply on paver choice issue before my vote on pavers. What is your locale - Canada or Northern tier US? interesting that the plants you have all do well in my balmy area of zone 8 Pacific Northwest!

Mortar in your pavers as a border for the gravel or rock with a binder.

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deco. that is a pretty look. i like rustic/natural look to the edging blocks.