The previous owners had let the bushes that fronted the garden complete overgrow and they were starting to cover the the driveway. I have no idea how the previous owners managed to park their car on the driveway, let alone get out of their car when it was parked on there! The height of the bushes had gotten out of control also and on the other side, there was bushes that belonged to us growing over into the neighbours front garden.
One of the first things that we did when we moved in was cut the bushes back enough for us to get on to the driveway and get out of the car. We took so much off that we had one of the biggest heaps of garden waste I have ever seen covering the lower part of the garden grass. It was such a mess and due to lack of time and with no quick means to get rid of it, the waste stayed piled up like that for months. It was not a good look.
A local gardener dropped a leaflet by our house a month or so ago, and though we are saving for (hopefully) an attic conversion, I'd had enough of the mess the garden was in and so I popped him an email. The plan was just to get rid of the bush, perhaps leave a tree made out of bush and clear the waste. And that's exactly what he did, but sadly it still looked bad and our bush 'tree' was just embarrassing. The now exposed wall was falling apart and what was once green grass was now just mud where the garden waste had sat for so long. (See below).
So, we decided to get rid of the bush 'tree', have the wall knocked down and put gravel over the mud all the way up to just past where there were rocks which led to the next level of grass (as our garden is on an incline). We decided to leave a little grass and use sleepers instead of rocks to make it look a little more modern. We also added some solar lights, which look really cool in the evenings when they're lit up. In the spring/summer the flowers will hopefully grow back underneath our front windows, we had roses last year so hopefully they'll grow back again this year and look really pretty. On the whole we are really happy with it. We now get to park both cars off the road and that's been so much better! We feel that it looks a lot more modern than it did. It's just a shame I didn't get those before the before pictures - the difference is honestly quite shocking!
After the garden waste and bushes were taken out but before the gravel driveway was decided on. The 'tree' we tried to create out of bush sadly looked rather pathetic.
Mud everywhere from where the garden waste had sat for so long. 
Street view (before).
Before the gravel.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After
Front view - after.
The grass may still need a cut, but the rest is finished! ;)
Having space for two cars has been so much better. We just need to the gravel to set in a little more and the flowers under the front windows to grow back, we're hoping to see rose buses again this year!
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