When it's tricky to manoeuvre your car on to the drive and difficult to get in and out of your driveway, your much-loved home can feel like a bit of a hassle.
It could also deter future buyers if you decided to sell. The owners of a beautiful Cotswolds home in Broadway weighed up the costs and decided to take the plunge, recruiting Greenfields Garden Services to give their outdoor space a makeover.
The five-week project has made a world of difference to everyday travel and potentially increased the property value by 10 per cent.
SoGlos caught up with Greenfields Garden Services landscape manager James Hopkins to find out more about the project.
He said: 'The client couldn't get the car on to the drive due to the severity of the angle on the transition from road to the drive. I even feared scraping my SUV when exiting the driveway.
'I came up with a solution which wouldn’t lose too much of the slope, to keep the cost down, but would greatly improve the transition from the road to the drive which caused all the problems.'
The driveway needed to respect the colour pallet of the area. Weighing up the pale buff colour, Hopkins opted for a quarried York stone which is lighter than Cotswold stone chippings and also far more wear resistant.
The client also had issues with turning vehicles at the top of the driveway, so Greenfields increased the size of the drive near the house to allow space for two parking spaces with additional manoeuvring space behind.
To achieve this, the team had to remove a huge amount of soil and build a retaining wall to keep it all in place.
The team installed a sturdy wall which measured 100mm thick for strength with an additional 100mm air gap to allow the wall to breathe.
The client also wanted to improve the entrance to the house, so Hopkins and his team extended the paving with some slabs they had on-site along with building a smaller retaining wall to finish.
