Driveway Ideas: 10 From Nottingham Front Gardens We've Worked On

Most of the front gardens we're asked to look at have the same problem. They're too small to sit in, too big to ignore, and the car is parked on the road outside. Turning some or all of the garden into a drive is the obvious answer. Making it look like part of the house, and not a car park, takes a bit more thought.

These are ten front garden driveway ideas, all from jobs we've worked on around Nottingham. Each one is on a photo of our own work, with what makes it work and what to check before you copy it. The surfaces are the ones we lay on our driveway installations: porcelain, tarmac, gravel and block paving, with the edging and drainage that go with them.

1. Lay big porcelain slabs from wall to wall

On a modern house with white render and dark windows, large porcelain slabs suit it best. Big slabs mean fewer joints, so the whole front reads as one clean surface rather than a pattern.

The slabs on this one run the full width of the plot, so there's room to park and still walk round the car to the door. For a drive we use heavier paving than we'd put on a patio, because it has a car on it every day.

Porcelain doesn't let water through. The drive has to fall away from the house towards a drain, a lawn or a border, and on a frontage this size that matters for planning as well. There's more on it in the rules section further down.

2. Frame tarmac with a block paved border

Tarmac is hard wearing and suits most houses, but on its own it can look plain, and the edges are where it starts to break up. A border of block paving round the outside gives it a crisp line and something solid to finish against.

Here the border is a single row of charcoal blocks, close in colour to the tarmac, so it looks smart without shouting. A red or buff block against black tarmac does the opposite and turns the edge into a feature. One row is usually enough either way. The channel drain across the entrance catches water running down the drive before it gets to the pavement.

A block paving driveway, with blocks across the whole surface, is the other way to go, and it's easy to repair, because a damaged block can be lifted out and swapped. From a review of a block paving job:

3. Choose gravel, and edge it all the way round

A gravel driveway is the simplest way to get a drive that drains. Rain goes straight through it, and gravel is one of the surfaces the Planning Portal names as permeable, so the five square metre rule doesn't come into it.

The photo at the top of this post shows what makes gravel work, which is an edge on every side. A timber sleeper holds the stones back from the planted bed on the left, a dark edge runs along the fence on the right, and a band of dark paving across the entrance stops tyres dragging stones out onto the pavement. Leave the edges off and the gravel ends up in the beds and the road.

That sleeper edge is also a raised bed, and it's an easy way to mix a drive with planting. The shrubs soften a frontage that would otherwise be all stone and car. Our guide to raised beds covers the soil and depth if you want to plant one.

Gravel does need the odd rake and an occasional top up. If you're still deciding between surfaces, our guide to choosing a driveway goes through block paving, resin, gravel, concrete and paving one at a time.

4. Turn the whole front garden into parking

On plenty of terraced and semi detached houses, the front garden isn't used for anything. It's an overgrown strip between the pavement and the door. Using the whole width for parking gets the car off the road and gives you room to open the doors.

If two cars need to fit, measure both with the doors open before you settle on a layout. Parking side by side takes width and parking nose to tail takes depth, and a small frontage rarely has much of both. Gravel suits a job like this because it covers a big area and still lets the water through.

5. Run the drive all the way to the garage

Where there's a garage, the drive should get you to it, with room in front to park more than one car.

On this new build the tarmac runs from the road, along the side of the house and up to the garages, and it's wide enough to park in front of them. A narrow strip of chippings is left along the house wall, so the tarmac has a clean edge to finish against and doesn't run straight into the brickwork.

6. Let the edging follow the curves

Not every front garden is a rectangle. Curved walls and bay windows are common on older houses, and the edge of the drive has to follow them neatly or the whole job looks unfinished.

A row of small blocks bends round a curve far more easily than a straight kerb does, and it gives the tarmac a firm edge all the way round. It takes time to get right, and people notice when it is. Debbie Lynn's review picks it out:

7. Catch the water before it reaches the pavement

A solid drive that falls towards the road sends every downpour across the pavement. A channel drain along the front edge catches it first.

Robert Kirkpatrick's review photos show the same front garden three ways: as a lawn, as slate chippings and as the tarmac drive above.

The water a channel drain collects still has to end up somewhere that fits the planning rules. Settle that at the design stage, before the surface goes down.

8. Give the front door its own path

When the drive takes up the whole front, the way to the door often ends up as a squeeze between the car and the wall. A path of its own, in a different material from the drive, shows visitors where to walk.

This path is laid in large pale slabs, with dark chippings between the slabs and the house wall and a strip of lawn between the path and the block paving. Big slabs make a short path feel more generous than a row of small ones. Make it wide enough for two people side by side, or for you and a wheelie bin.

9. Fill the leftover strips with stones

Every drive leaves awkward bits, like the strip under the front window or the edge where a lawn used to be. Grass in those spots gets driven on and turns to mud, so stones are the better bet.

It's one of the easiest low maintenance front garden ideas. Lay the stones over a weed membrane, keep them below the edge of the drive so they don't spill onto it, and let the shape follow the line of the paving.

10. Light the edges

For half the year you get home from work in the dark. Low lights set into a wall or edge show where the drive stops, and they make the front of the house look cared for.

On this one the lights are set into a sleeper wall that runs along the front of the house and round the side of the drive. The cable for lights like these goes in while the wall is being built and before the drive is surfaced, so decide on lighting at the start. It's the same with a patio, and our patio ideas show more of it.

What every driveway needs, whichever idea you pick

The ideas above are the part you see. What decides whether a drive still looks right in ten years is underneath it.

• A dug-out base. The old surface and soil come out and a compacted stone sub-base goes in. Laid on soil, any surface sinks, ruts or cracks once a car is on it
• Paving made for cars. Driveway paving is heavier than patio paving, because a car is a far bigger load than a garden table
• A fixed edge. Gravel and block paving both creep outwards without one, and tarmac crumbles at an edge with nothing to hold it
• A fall, and somewhere for the water to go. Away from the house, towards a drain, a lawn or a border, or straight through a permeable surface
• The right height. Where the drive meets the house, it should sit at least 150mm below the damp proof course, the same as a patio

A drive that starts to sink rarely gets better on its own. Nigel Bradley had lived with one for years before he called us:

The front garden rules, in short

In England you can usually pave a front garden without planning permission, as long as the water has somewhere to go. The Planning Portal says you won't need permission for a new or replacement driveway of any size if it uses a permeable surface, such as gravel, permeable concrete block paving or porous asphalt, or if the rainwater is directed to a lawn or border to drain naturally. If neither is true and the area is more than five square metres, you need permission. The rule has been in place since October 2008, and the government's guidance on permeable surfacing of front gardens explains the options. It applies to houses, not flats or maisonettes, and some areas have an Article 4 direction or planning condition that changes it.

The kerb is a separate permission. Driving over the pavement without a dropped kerb is illegal. Inside the city, Nottingham City Council asks for an enquiry first and then issues a Section 184 licence, and it needs a driveway in place or one built at the same time. In the rest of the county you apply to Nottinghamshire County Council, and if the crossing is onto an A, B or C classified road you're likely to need planning permission as well. It's worth sorting the dropped kerb at the same time as the drive, and it's something we can arrange.

We lay driveways across Nottingham in block paving, resin, porcelain and sandstone paving, concrete and tarmac, along with gravel, edging and dropped kerbs. You can see more of our finished work, and what customers said about it, on our reviews page.