Not being able to park in front of your house is extremely inconvenient but it makes you talk to your neighbours, or to at least recognise them. We used to live in a Cotswold village that predated cars by a couple of millennia. Very inconvenient, very pretty and very strong community.
This is such a good point! Yesterday my wife was weeding in the front garden. She hasn't been out much since some clown of a surgeon damaged her Carotid Artery during a routine procedure causing her to have a major brain stem stroke and taking her to within mm of her life in ICU. 46 years old. When the neighbours saw her they all came out to say hello. Short while later one of the neighbours came back with two hiking sticks for my wife. She has been struggling with her walking. These sticks made a monumental difference to her balance and she can now walk twice as fast as she could on Sunday all because she spent some time in the front garden.
Achtung Sorry to hear about you wife and hope she goes from strength to strength. What a lovely thing for your neighbour to do gardening is good for you in so many way's. It gets you out and you can met people and when they find your not well they are there to help all be it just a chat or in your wife's case a more practical help with a very kind act.
Thanks Dee. You know, although I'm being a grumpy old sod on here, whingeing about what people do with their gardens my faith in people is still strong. Sometimes you have to go through s**t to learn this.
Your welcome, I hope this encourages her to get out and about and helps her go forward after what must have been a difficult and hard time for you both. Best wishes.
There are a number of interesting points raised here. Regarding people not using their garages, many modern cars won't fit into garages built 20 or 30 years ago. When we moved into our current house, I could park my car between the house and the side fence. If I tried that with my current car I wouldn't be able to get out of it, and that has nothing to do with weight gain.
We have new neighbours, 2 adult generations, and between them they have 2 work vans and two cars. They have taken down part of their front fence to enable them to park all the vehicles off the road. The front lawn had to be replaced with gravel in order to do that, and it was done because they don't want to obstruct the road any more than they have to. People don't only pave over lawns because they don't like gardening, at times it is from necessity.
I Only once had a front garden that could be converted when I lived in the UK and that was 60ft long! on that house we all crammed down a narrow (just wide enough for two cars to pass) blind back lane, I learnt to drive there I'm very good at reversing and parallel parking in small spaces! Every other house was either bang on the pavement or had steps. My mothers house is an ex-council semi with a large green and plenty of parking for every house to have 3 cars if they liked. But still people take half the (large it could take 4) large front gardens to park, remember insurance is less if it is parked off the road.
Here we have a large totally unused front garden, as our drive goes round the back to the old farmyard.
As to design I grew up in a big 1930's detached house with enough drive space to park 15 cars.. all in the front garden behind the rockery!
We managed to pave for two cars to snuggly fit at the front and also allow space for plants...thankfuly most of our neighbours still have their front gardens intact as the street layout dates from the 1840s and has enough space for two rows of parked cars. Paving the whole front garden would have been utterly unacceptable to me as it is so bland and lifeless, but we are lucky to have a decent sized front garden...others have no choice.
On a funny note...I used to get a lady passing buy when I started planting last autumn and give me this awfully judgemental look every damned time. Then one day she decided to tell me she thought it looked lovely since we bought the place and she doesn't have to look at a waterlogged grassy mess on her frequent walks 😂
I don't know much about English regs but new houses in Wales are expected to provide 1 off-road parking space/bedroom up to a maximum of 3 spaces. If you extend your house to add bedrooms, as a lot of people are these days to avoid the costs of moving to a bigger house, then the Planning Department will ask you to provide all 3 spaces on your property no matter how nice your garden looks. In their defence though I have had Planning Departments ask for Grasscrete paving to preserve the 'green look' but often grass doesn't grow well in there and it gets ripped out once people think they can get away with it. In an age where plastic grass is a rapidly growing industry it's hard to get anyone to care about plants anymore.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
We had 2 concrete runs in our garden, had it paved a few years back, half is shingle, planted with big specimin plants, a pots all round the property, a border by next doors border, theirs is full of weeds which encrouch on our garden. We live a small village, narrow road, people park ouside to go to the local shops (Tesco express, etc) there is a big car park there, so you end up no-where near you own property. Lots of the new neighbours, now have businesses, 3 white vans, plus cars, all now parked in he road, because they cant be bothered to move vehicles in and out of their drive. We had to get permission from the District Council for the parking, AND the county council and pay several thousand for a certificate to cross the path, and for the drop down curb. Bloke 3 doors down just parks in his front garden, no dropped curb, when I complained to the guy from the C.C. he just laughed! ending up making it difficult to get out of the drive.
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On a funny note...I used to get a lady passing buy when I started planting last autumn and give me this awfully judgemental look every damned time. Then one day she decided to tell me she thought it looked lovely since we bought the place and she doesn't have to look at a waterlogged grassy mess on her frequent walks 😂